tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/digital-archives-9712/articlesDigital archives – The Conversation2023-09-26T21:31:39Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2097752023-09-26T21:31:39Z2023-09-26T21:31:39ZReclaiming Dada women’s art history shouldn’t mean amplifying orientalism and sexism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549129/original/file-20230919-23-on9z6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C59%2C4256%2C2740&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">1920s Dada artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was known as 'the Living Dada.' </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsa_von_Freytag-Loringhoven#/media/File:Baroness_Von_Freytag_-_Loringhoven_LCCN2014714092.jpg">(Library of Congress)</a></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/reclaiming-dada-womens-art-history-shouldnt-mean-amplifying-orientalism-and-sexism" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Digital archives have become powerful platforms for <a href="https://doi.org/10.24242/jclis.v1i2.27">women artists who were excluded from official art history</a>, allowing them to claim their rightful place posthumously. </p>
<p>This is evident in dedicated digital projects for early-to-mid 20th century avant-gardists <a href="https://mina-loy.com">like artist, writer and entrepreneur Mina Loy</a>, antiwar activist and cabaret artist <a href="https://www.perfectduluthday.com/2022/06/11/avant-garde-women-emmy-hennings-shining-star-of-the-voltaire">Emmy Hennings</a> or Dada <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/655737/body-sweats-by-elsa-von-freytag-loringhoven-edited-by-irene-gammel-and-suzanne-zelazo/9780262529754">artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven</a>. The latter was better known as the Baroness or Baroness Elsa following her 1913 New York City Hall marriage to an impoverished German baron who was then residing in the United States. The Baroness has been the subject of my research. </p>
<p>However, amid the legitimate excitement of bringing overlooked female artists into the foreground through archival work, there are problems <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2017.1357009">when digital copies of archives proliferate</a> and aren’t critically contextualized. </p>
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<h2>‘The Living Dada’</h2>
<p>Dada, an anti-bourgeois art movement <a href="https://magazine.artland.com/what-is-dadaism/">that emerged during the First World War</a>, challenged western institutions of art through its rabble-rousing manifestos, collages and performances. </p>
<p>Among Dada’s controversial, albeit less well-known practitioners, was Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927), a German emigree poet and performer. She was known as the “living Dada” in New York. </p>
<p>My research has documented Baroness Elsa’s value as <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262572156/baroness-elsa">an early feminist performance artist</a> who made bold statements through her attire. She drew on the irrational to express the trauma of the era, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262600668/irrational-modernism">as art historian Amelia Jones chronicles</a>. Writer Caroline Knighton has <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/modernist-wastes-9781350129047">examined how Baroness Elsa used waste products in art</a> to subversively link art to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-subversive-artists-made-thrift-shopping-cool-82362">thrift culture</a>. </p>
<p>The University of Maryland’s online accessibility to <a href="https://archives.lib.umd.edu/repositories/2/resources/22">Freytag-Loringhoven’s manuscripts and papers</a> has played a pivotal role in restoring the artist’s rightful place in history. </p>
<p>Using <a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/304923596?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true">digital methods, literature scholar Tanya Clement</a> has explored Freytag-Loringhoven’s experimental poetry through the lens of “textual performance.” </p>
<h2>Unverified images</h2>
<p>As the Baronness’s profile has been raised through research, so have less authoritative depictions of her work. A photograph lacking proper attribution and sourcing is presented on various websites as Freytag-Loringhoven. A reverse image search reveals the photo to be <a href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-f43d-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99">from a Russian theatre performance of the play <em>The Blue Bird</em></a> (1884-1940). Other research confirms the photo actually shows Russian actress Maria Germanova. </p>
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<p>This image also points to a deeper interplay between the Baroness and the West’s <em>fin-de-siecle</em> fascination <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780415249126-H014-1">with orientalism</a>, a harmful cultural practice originating in the west in a context of imperial domination that conceptualizes the East in alluringly exotic and sensualist terms. </p>
<p>Seeing this image asks us to question how the Baroness was conceptualized and stereotyped within orientalist terms during her era, her relationship to this lens and how these issues manifest in current depictions of her. </p>
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<h2>Orientalist, sexist 1915 descriptors</h2>
<p>In 1915, the <em>New York Times’</em> Dec. 5 issue introduced the Baroness’s artmaking in orientalist terms. Her Polish descent, the article asserts, “accounts for a certain Oriental strain in her appearance and temperament.” The Baroness is described as being “lithe in figure, and as graceful as a leopard.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549175/original/file-20230919-23-4fk5c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549175/original/file-20230919-23-4fk5c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549175/original/file-20230919-23-4fk5c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549175/original/file-20230919-23-4fk5c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549175/original/file-20230919-23-4fk5c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549175/original/file-20230919-23-4fk5c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549175/original/file-20230919-23-4fk5c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Costume for a 19th century performance of ‘Semiramide.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiramide#/media/File:Rossini_-_Semiramide_-_Paris_1825_-_Hippolyte_Lecomte_-_Semiramis_1er_Costume_(Mdme_Fodor)_(cropped).jpg">Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Bibliothèque-musée de l'opéra, D216-19 (fol. 58).</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The story said she was modelling for a painting depicting “Semiramide, the turbulent queen of the East of Yore.” This refers to <a href="https://www.metopera.org/user-information/synopses-archive/semiramide">Gioachino Rossini’s eponymous opera</a> which the Metropolitan Opera in New York performed in 1892, 1894, and 1895, popularizing orientalism. I have not been able to locate this painting.</p>
<p>In the story, the Baroness explains she has worked until 3 a.m. that night to finish a new dress to wear to pose for a drawing class. She relays she has applied to the German consulate for support because her husband is a prisoner of war. The story is headlined: “Refugee baroness poses as a model.” </p>
<p>In amplifying an orientalist framing and sexually objectifying the Baroness, the news story suggests an eroticized narrative of her social downfall instead of amplifying her artistic vision and competence to earn a living as an artist. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-woman-could-paint-the-story-of-art-without-men-corrects-nearly-600-years-of-male-focused-art-criticism-184458">'No woman could paint': The Story of Art Without Men corrects nearly 600 years of male-focused art criticism</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>The story also grapples with understanding her avant-gardism, saying “Perhaps some might call her bizarre in attire.” Her garments are seen in several December 1915 photographs. One depicts a see-through silk cape. Another shows her posing with a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nyc-fireboat-rebranded-vibrant-dazzle-camouflage-commemorate-wwi-180969683">geometric pattern evocative of the “dazzle” camouflage on war ships</a>. </p>
<p>Both images present her boundary-breaking avant-garde poses and design aesthetics. Her bold stare at the camera is unconventional for a woman of that era, though this is mainstream today. Avant-garde aesthetics have been routinely appropriated into the mainstream. </p>
<p>According to art historian Francis M. Naumann’s book <em><a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/New_York_Dada_1915_23.html?id=SF5QAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">New York Dada</a></em>, the year 1915 marked the beginning of the Dada movement in New York. </p>
<p>As Amy Malek warns in her 2021 study “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877920957348">Clickbait Orientalism and Vintage Iranian Snapshots</a>,” “latent orientalist ideologies continue to circulate,” even as their manifest forms change over time. Images that trade on “gendered orientalist tropes” attract attention and revenue. </p>
<h2>Complicated relationship to orientalism</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538133/original/file-20230718-17584-jq63gx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A photograph of a woman in profile view with hand lettering underneath." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538133/original/file-20230718-17584-jq63gx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538133/original/file-20230718-17584-jq63gx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538133/original/file-20230718-17584-jq63gx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538133/original/file-20230718-17584-jq63gx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538133/original/file-20230718-17584-jq63gx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538133/original/file-20230718-17584-jq63gx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538133/original/file-20230718-17584-jq63gx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Baroness Elsa seen in a photograph decorated by her with stylized lettering, which appeared in ‘The Little Review,’ vol. 7, no. 3, September-December 1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsa_von_Freytag-Loringhoven#/media/File:Baroness_Elsa_von_Freytag-Loringhoven.png">(Modernist Journals Project)</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The Baroness had a complicated relationship to orientalism. She was part of contemporary art movements that mobilized and were affected by this cultural lens, and she included references to the sphinx and Buddha in her poetry published in <em>The Little Review</em> which represent orientalist tropes. </p>
<p>Simultaneously, in her <a href="https://archives.lib.umd.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/11123">autobiographical writings</a>, she ridiculed these same male artists for stereotyping women as hetaeras, ancient Greek prostitutes who were also intellectual companions. She was quick to point out appropriations as artistic fetishes. </p>
<p>In her poem “<a href="https://digital.lib.umd.edu/resultsnew/id/umd:59516">Arabesque</a>,” a Dadaist stream of words breaks their conventional meanings, as in the lines “upon honeysuckle fists/ arabesque grotesque/ basks […]/ beetle.” Arabesque refers to <a href="https://theconversation.com/contemporary-muslim-artists-continue-to-adapt-islamic-patterns-to-challenge-ideas-about-fixed-culture-176656">floral or biomorphic decoration appropriated from Islamic ornamentation in western arts</a>. </p>
<p>This rendering may be interpreted as disrupting or mocking <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/orie/hd_orie.htm">popular orientalist fads</a> in the west, in lieu of uncritically reproducing them. </p>
<h2>Images shape identity, perception</h2>
<p>Images have the power to shape our identity and perception. A diligent effort should be made to accurately source and responsibly contextualize images. It is also crucial to refrain from framing digital objects in manners that reinforce the allure of orientalism. </p>
<p>Custodians of archival websites must take responsibility in engaging in critical inquiry about the societal and ethical impact of images they post. </p>
<p>By doing so, we can ensure the ethics of digitization related to documenting feminist histories are robust. And, by critically challenging orientalist images and ideologies, we help ensure a renewed appreciation and understanding of the true significance of the Baroness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209775/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Irene Gammel receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>Digital archives can have an important part in creating more inclusive art histories, but paying attention to ethical research practices when sharing and circulating resources is critical.Irene Gammel, Professor & Director, Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre and Gallery, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2016882023-03-17T15:54:30Z2023-03-17T15:54:30ZWales Broadcast Archive: UK’s first national archive shows importance of preserving our audiovisual history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516021/original/file-20230317-2393-28331k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C0%2C5000%2C3308&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hundreds of thousands of hours of broadcasting history are available for the first time. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Wales</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This month’s launch of the <a href="https://www.library.wales/national-broadcast-archive">Wales Broadcast Archive</a> marks a major step forward in the curation of our collective audiovisual heritage. Housed at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, the archive features a cornucopia of material dating back to the early days of broadcasting in Wales, including film, radio and video. That it is the first of its kind in the UK, however, raises important questions about access to our audiovisual history. </p>
<p>As Unesco <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/days/audiovisual-heritage?TSPD_101_R0=080713870fab2000502fe465bc04f6b27c52c9a0193e80a672ab1f5e21b1a4c85415302e3aabbd9b0810cf430e143000feeb184c026bc21a1537bc94124a8c96ed03ccb6d0f06a7ece1443260cacbf0531925b304c6ee161f47d82620e01e8ca">remarked</a> on the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage last October:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Audiovisual archives tell us stories about people’s lives and cultures from all over the world. They represent a priceless heritage which is an affirmation of our collective memory and a valuable source of knowledge, since they reflect the cultural, social and linguistic diversity of our communities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>More often than not, access to broadcast archives has been restricted to those working within the industry or academic researchers. Last year, though, the <a href="https://bbcrewind.co.uk/">BBC opened up</a> part of its digitised archive online, allowing the public to access some of its hidden gems.</p>
<p>However, the new Wales archive is unique in that it brings together the archives of its three major broadcasters - BBC, ITV and S4C. It contains material reflecting all aspects of life in both the English and Welsh languages. It is a unique source of information which will give historians and others an insight into the history of the nation.</p>
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<p>As well as preserving our broadcast heritage in its original and digitised form in Aberystwyth, people around Wales will be able to access around 500,000 hours of archive footage in dedicated “clip centres” housed across the nation. For the first time, members of the public will be able to see historical footage of their local areas and hear voices from years gone by.</p>
<p>Although the Wales Broadcast Archive is unique within the UK, there are similar institutions further afield. One such organisation is the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, <a href="https://www.beeldengeluid.nl/en">Beeld en Geluid</a>, which opened in 1997. It provided a useful model for the establishment of the Welsh archive. As a heritage institute, it preserves the audiovisual material of the Netherlands, with material from the country’s various broadcasters under one roof.</p>
<h2>Technology and storage challenges</h2>
<p>Of course, archives are not without their problems or their gaps. Very early television programmes, for example, are now lost forever. The technology simply didn’t exist to record in the pre-war and immediate post-war period. Nothing survives from the BBC’s pre-war television service at <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/100-voices/birth-of-tv/ally-pally/">Alexandra Palace</a> – apart, that is, from some fascinating film shot on a home movie camera by one of the corporation’s engineers, Desmond Campbell, which is held by the <a href="http://bufvc.ac.uk/archives/index.php/collection/857">Alexandra Palace Television Society</a>.</p>
<p>As Dick Fiddy, a consultant at the British Film Institute, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/_/m6AMngEACAAJ?hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi3q4GL5t79AhWFRkEAHY32DVMQre8FegQIDRAD">noted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The early technical difficulties associated with the recording of live television programmes, and the later injudicious wiping and junking policies of the major British broadcasters, has meant that hundreds of thousands of hours of precious television material is missing from the official UK television archives.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Over the years, many broadcasters have had to dispense with their audiovisual material simply for storage reasons. Film and videotape can take up a lot of floor space, let alone audio recordings. When one considers the huge amount of broadcasting hours that are chewed up every week, it is easy to see how physical material can mount up over time.</p>
<p>So, broadcasters have had to adopt selection policies, making decisions on what material or programmes might be historically important in the future. As you can imagine, this has not been an easy task. Often, entertainment programmes such as quiz shows, variety or local chat shows were deemed to have no intrinsic value and were overlooked for archival purposes. </p>
<p>Archivists are also faced with an ongoing dilemma. They need to be preserving material for future generations while also ensuring that the producers of current programmes have the necessary audiovisual archives at their disposal. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a wheelchair and a man standing wear sets of headphones. Both are in a large room and are looking at a screen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516023/original/file-20230317-1658-1a8ot7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516023/original/file-20230317-1658-1a8ot7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516023/original/file-20230317-1658-1a8ot7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516023/original/file-20230317-1658-1a8ot7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516023/original/file-20230317-1658-1a8ot7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516023/original/file-20230317-1658-1a8ot7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516023/original/file-20230317-1658-1a8ot7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The public can also access the new archive in dedicated ‘clip centres’ throughout Wales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The question now is whether the other UK nations should follow suit. While a similar model could be adopted in Scotland, in England the issue of whether the archives should house an English or British archive would need to be overcome.</p>
<p>Our collective audiovisual heritage provides a key to understanding ourselves as a society. It provides an additional access route into our past which complements that provided by the written record. </p>
<p>After all, archives are witnesses to history. They allow us to see how we lived, how we dressed, how we talked, how we were entertained, and how and when we watched or listened together. They also allow us to reflect and to learn. The Wales Broadcast Archive will do this and I, for one, am celebrating its arrival.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201688/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Medhurst has received funding from the AHRC, The Leverhulme Trust, and the British Academy in the past</span></em></p>The Wales Broadcast Archive in Aberystwyth brings together the archives of the BBC, ITV and S4C under one roof.Jamie Medhurst, Professor of Media and Communication, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1847332022-06-09T06:17:01Z2022-06-09T06:17:01ZThe ABC’s plan to axe its librarians will damage its journalism. Here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467941/original/file-20220609-15-3b1r0l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the war broke out in the Ukraine early this year, journalists scrambled to gather stories and images from the archives to supplement information and images gathered on the ground. A similar scramble occurred when floods struck Queensland, as it often does when big stories break. </p>
<p>We saw the results on our screens, but what we didn’t see was the invisible yet critical work of librarians and archivists – the people who design, manage and facilitate access to the archival systems that house vital news resources. </p>
<p>This makes all the more surprising the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jun/08/abc-to-abolish-58-librarian-and-archivist-jobs-with-journalists-to-do-archival-work">news</a> that the ABC plans to eliminate librarian and archivist positions and require its journalists to fill the gap. Journalists are expert investigators and storytellers, but their success in reporting stories rests on their ability to find source material quickly and effortlessly – a process in which librarians and archivists play a key role. </p>
<p>Timely access to source material is critical. Extra time spent looking for resources – not to mention uploading and describing new material – is time taken away from journalists’ other work. </p>
<p>The ABC’s information professionals are trained according to the requirements of the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA). They are experienced in helping journalists access resources easily and quickly. They digitise and store resources methodically and apply the “metadata” – the detailed descriptive tags – necessary for efficient retrieval. This archival work is especially important at the ABC, a vital repository of Australian history and culture.</p>
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<p>When information professionals do their jobs well, journalists and other researchers can readily find what they need and download material seamlessly.</p>
<h2>Why does this matter?</h2>
<p>Relying on untrained journalists to do the work of qualified information professionals – asking them to archive their own materials and apply metadata – means valuable material will be mislabelled, or not labelled at all. As ALIA and the Australian Society of Archivists put it in their <a href="https://www.alia.org.au/Web/News/Articles/2022/June-2022/ASA_ALIA_Joint_Statement.aspx">joint response</a> to the planned staff cuts: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The ability to find archival footage and reports which underpin everything from TV drama to news radio is deeply valued by other ABC professional staff, who do not have the professional skills to undertake this work themselves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Without the librarians’ and archivists’ expertise to draw on, journalists will be hampered by less reliable and efficient metadata, wasting critical time for those working to deadline. Key resources needed to verify facts will be overlooked, undermining the trustworthiness of reporting. </p>
<p>Metadata are critical for finding materials in an ever-growing sea of new information. Although some metadata tags (the name of the creator of a work, for example, or the date the work was created) may be easy to assign, other tags require expert, trained judgement. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-abcs-budget-hasnt-been-restored-its-still-facing-1-2-billion-in-accumulated-losses-over-a-decade-176532">The ABC's budget hasn't been restored – it's still facing $1.2 billion in accumulated losses over a decade</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Consider a journalist who takes a photo of a building. When she archives this resource she must take care to note date, location and specifications. She will need to decide, for example, whether the location tag should be Australia, Victoria, Melbourne or Collingwood – or some combination of these terms. Librarians and archivists make these decisions to suit the needs of journalists and editors who might search for that image months, years or decades later. </p>
<p>More importantly, though, archivists and librarians need to assign these terms consistently. If all buildings are assigned generic city locations (such as “Melbourne”), future journalists will find it hard to locate images for stories about specific suburbs. Worse still, if journalists make different choices about how specific to be – with some assigning “Collingwood” while others assign “Australia” – future users of the system won’t easily be able to retrieve all images of buildings in the same location. If a busy journalist chooses not to identify the location at all – understandable in the midst of a busy newsroom – the image becomes lost in the system.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467945/original/file-20220609-12-7pmyhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Photos from ABC archive" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467945/original/file-20220609-12-7pmyhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467945/original/file-20220609-12-7pmyhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467945/original/file-20220609-12-7pmyhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467945/original/file-20220609-12-7pmyhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467945/original/file-20220609-12-7pmyhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467945/original/file-20220609-12-7pmyhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467945/original/file-20220609-12-7pmyhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You must remember this: part of a Powerhouse Museum display of photos from the ABC archive to mark the broadcaster’s 75th anniversary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/exhibitions/broadcasting-sydney-images-abc-archives">Jenni Carter for Sydney Living Museums</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over time, the problem compounds. As thousands of images, articles, recordings and other materials are added, people searching for material will be forced to search using multiple keywords, eating into their time for other journalistic work.</p>
<p>Research in information science demonstrates that people often take the simplest route, particularly when facing deadlines. So they may search for “Collingwood buildings” and – finding nothing – presume that no relevant images exist, without realising that only a “Melbourne” tag was assigned.</p>
<h2>A vital part of our history</h2>
<p>Journalists will also lose access to specialist advice to help them find the information they need for credible, reliable reporting. Although some journalists may turn elsewhere for this advice – staff in public or government libraries, for instance – <a href="https://books.emeraldinsight.com/page/detail/looking-for-information/?k=9781785609688">research</a> demonstrates that reporters and editors trained in digital searching practices are less likely to seek the advice of librarians and colleagues overall. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1534703103705985024"}"></div></p>
<p>Information science researchers and practitioners across the GLAM sector – galleries, libraries, archives and museums – developed this expertise over many centuries. </p>
<p>Following the second world war, they spearheaded the development of complex automated systems designed to gather, catalogue, index, and present information to the public. This work underpins everyday practices, from searching Google to finding movies on Netflix. </p>
<p>Although the stereotypes of librarians and archivists remain (inappropriately) grounded in a presumption of work happening in dusty bookshelves and basement collections, these professionals are taking the lead in ensuring digital materials are accessible. As ALIA and ASA note, the ABC’s collections are “of national significance,” the value of which goes well beyond the work of just one news organisation.</p>
<p>Without complete, easily findable records, journalists can’t tell the whole story; their ability to quickly retrieve historic source material, to complete background work and conduct fact-checking, will be eroded, as will their ability to tell Australia’s stories with integrity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa M. Given receives funding from the Australian Research Council, including projects in partnership with the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) and the National State Libraries Association. She is a former President of the Association for Information Science and Technology.</span></em></p>The national broadcaster has a special role in preserving audio and visual materials, not least to underpin its own reportuingLisa M. Given, Director, Social Change Enabling Capability Platform & Professor of Information Sciences, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1553642021-02-28T13:36:44Z2021-02-28T13:36:44ZFor the record: Digitizing archives can increase access to information but compromise privacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386487/original/file-20210225-19-1vd7g8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C0%2C6579%2C4466&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Digitizing archives can make information more accessible, especially during the coronavirus pandemic.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Stay-at-home orders mean no eating at restaurants, attending shows or visiting friends and family. It also means that Canadian archives institutions and facilities, following public health orders, have restricted access for genealogists, academic researchers and anyone else digging through the past. </p>
<p>Why don’t archives just digitize everything and make it available online?</p>
<p>Collections at a large archive like <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/about-us/about-collection/Pages/about.aspx">Library and Archives Canada (LAC)</a> include hundreds of kilometres of records, millions of photographic images, maps, architectural plans and artworks, and hundreds of thousands of hours of audio and video recordings. LAC, like other archives, has more mandate than budget. Digitizing this quantity of material far exceeds the institution’s resources.</p>
<p>Then there are the benefits relative to costs. Archives like LAC cite the <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/about-us/about-collection/Pages/digitization-lac.aspx">popularity of records as the number one reason for digitization</a>. Legal and academic research requires not just selected records, but entire bodies of records, including many not looked at since they were put into the archives. Digitizing large runs of obscure records would not be a responsible use of scarce public funds.</p>
<h2>Protecting privacy and intellectual property</h2>
<p>Like many archives in Canada, LAC holds government records as well as records donated by private individuals and organizations. Access to these private records may be restricted under legally binding donor agreements to protect donor privacy, third-party privacy or copyright.</p>
<p>But even with government records, the situation is not so simple. Government records include personal information of individuals, which must be protected under <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/ENG/ACTS/P-21/index.html">the Privacy Act</a>. </p>
<p>Equally, the <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/a-1/">Access to Information Act</a>, while opening many government records, keeps some closed to protect third-party privacy and national security, and for <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/access-information-privacy/access-information/access-information-manual.html#cha11">other reasons</a>. </p>
<p>Since government records include records received by government, such as when a citizen sends a letter or a consultant submits a report, governments do not hold the copyright on all their records. As a result, some cannot be digitized under <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-42/index.html">the Copyright Act</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/2020-is-a-year-for-the-history-books-but-not-without-digital-archives-140234">2020 is a year for the history books, but not without digital archives</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Canadian history is replete with examples of government surveillance that in retrospect is seen to be unwarranted and harmful. Indigenous communities, for example, have been under government surveillance for longer than Canada has been a nation. The records of this surveillance are government records. Digitizing them and placing them online <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3402%2Fijch.v75.32593">would deprive Indigenous people of their privacy and undermine Indigenous sovereignty</a>. </p>
<h2>Preserving the digital</h2>
<p>Archives do not destroy the records they digitize. For every digitized record the burden of preservation is doubled: the original must be maintained and the digital copy, to be useful, must be preserved against obsolescence and data loss. </p>
<p>Unless archives are provided special funding, digitization is a <a href="https://marketbusinessnews.com/financial-glossary/zero-sum-game-definition-meaning/">zero-sum game</a>: it uses up resources that are not available for other tasks. Among the most important of these is the preservation of born-digital records, including email, spreadsheets and documents, as well as new forms of records such as websites and social media. </p>
<p>Created on outdated computers and stored on obsolete media like floppy disks or CDs, born-digital records require specialized software, equipment and methods of preservation. Canadian archives desperately need public and researcher support for an infusion of funding to meet <a href="https://cca-reports.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/cofca_14-377_memoryinstitutions_web_e.pdf">the challenge of born-digital archiving</a>. </p>
<p>Given the ubiquity of digital technologies today, creating archives of born-digital records must be our most urgent priority — including <a href="https://rsc-src.ca/en/research-and-reports/covid-19-policy-briefing/remembering-is-form-honouring-preserving-covid-19">records created during the COVID-19 pandemic</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386492/original/file-20210225-17-lp1xe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Hands on a laptop keyboard with box files." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386492/original/file-20210225-17-lp1xe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386492/original/file-20210225-17-lp1xe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386492/original/file-20210225-17-lp1xe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386492/original/file-20210225-17-lp1xe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386492/original/file-20210225-17-lp1xe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386492/original/file-20210225-17-lp1xe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386492/original/file-20210225-17-lp1xe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Physical space is still required to preserve digital records.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Selective digitization</h2>
<p>Fortunately, archives have been working on this problem for some time now, and programs of selective digitization have been very successful at making high-use records readily available online. </p>
<p>Archives need to ensure that detailed, highly specific descriptions of records are created so that researchers can have a clear idea about the records they need to see before making travel plans.</p>
<p>Large archives, like LAC or <a href="https://www.banq.qc.ca/accueil/">Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec</a>, have <a href="https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/handle/1993/35197">regional offices that keep records close to where they are most relevant</a>. </p>
<p>And most importantly, Canadian archives have dedicated staff who can provide insight and assistance to researchers, or direct researchers to already digitized materials. Reaching out to archival staff before travelling to an archives is a good idea during the COVID-19 pandemic or anytime else.</p>
<p><a href="https://rsc-src.ca/en/future-now-canadas-libraries-archives-and-public-memory">Canadian archives have endured decades of funding shortfalls and reductions</a>, even as they have faced new challenges in digitizing non-digital records and capturing born-digital records. Increased funding is essential: but let’s not chase the mirage of digitizing everything.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greg Bak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>During the coronavirus pandemic, digitizing archives can help increase access. But in addition to the labour and financial costs, issues of privacy, copyright and resources need to be considered.Greg Bak, Associate Professor of History (Archival Studies), University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1487162020-10-28T00:09:02Z2020-10-28T00:09:02ZA litany of losses: a new project maps our abandoned arts events of 2020<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365713/original/file-20201027-15-1u1e55o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1080%2C863&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A re-imagined production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town was cancelled five days before opening.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anne-Louise Sarks</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There was a time when artists imagined and planned work for 2020. For some, years had gone into the planning. But, as we know, everything scheduled from the middle of March had to be cancelled. Some events may be scheduled again at another time; many will no longer happen.</p>
<p>A group of artists have put together a map of the abandoned artistic projects for 2020. Conceived by artist Anna Tregloan and named <a href="https://theimpossibleproject.com.au/final-archive">The Impossible Project</a>, it is a treasury of lost work and a time capsule of what we missed out on this year due to the pandemic.</p>
<p>There are already over 150 shows and events listed. More projects are being added all the time.</p>
<p>The Impossible Project captures the enormous range of work by Australian artists that could have happened in every Australian city, in regional areas and overseas.</p>
<p>We see the breadth and depth of artistic activity across the country; the loss for audiences, artists, and communities. Select a title, and you see the artists involved, the venue, the dates, the expected audience numbers. </p>
<p>It is a sobering experience.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365720/original/file-20201027-19-8q29ch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Screenshot of website" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365720/original/file-20201027-19-8q29ch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365720/original/file-20201027-19-8q29ch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365720/original/file-20201027-19-8q29ch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365720/original/file-20201027-19-8q29ch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365720/original/file-20201027-19-8q29ch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365720/original/file-20201027-19-8q29ch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365720/original/file-20201027-19-8q29ch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An imagined map lists more than 100 cancelled and postponed works.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Impossible Project</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Those that will never be…</h2>
<p>There is a re-imagined production of Thornton Wilder’s <a href="https://theimpossibleproject.com.au/our-town">Our Town</a> (projected audience: 5,000+), to be directed by Australian theatremaker Anne-Louise Sarks in Basel, Switzerland. In planning since 2018, involving performers from countries across the world, the play was cancelled five days before its March premiere.</p>
<p>Patricia Cornelius’s <a href="https://theimpossibleproject.com.au/donotgogentle">Do Not Go Gentle…</a> (projected audience: 8,000) was to be directed by Susie Dee in July at the Malthouse in Melbourne. </p>
<p>The play focuses on the experience of people in an aged care home; Shane Bourne was cast in the lead role. Given the experience of this year, the setting could not be more relevant. The play was presented in one sell-out season in 2009 – this 2020 production was more than 10 years in the making. </p>
<p><a href="https://theimpossibleproject.com.au/therivercrossing">The River Crossing</a> (projected audience: 4,000) was to be a large-scale outdoor performance where professional high-wire walkers and Bundjalung community members would cross the Wilsons River in Lismore in August. SeedArts Australia has been planning the project since 2018. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365716/original/file-20201027-21-s2aqtd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Development sketches" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365716/original/file-20201027-21-s2aqtd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365716/original/file-20201027-21-s2aqtd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365716/original/file-20201027-21-s2aqtd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365716/original/file-20201027-21-s2aqtd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365716/original/file-20201027-21-s2aqtd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365716/original/file-20201027-21-s2aqtd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365716/original/file-20201027-21-s2aqtd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Planning for The River Crossing took years. The structure remains only sketches.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SeedArts</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The all-female Belloo Creative was the resident theatre company at Queensland Theatre for 2019-20. To premiere in 2020, Katherine Lyall-Watson wrote a re-imagined <a href="https://theimpossibleproject.com.au/phaedra">Phaedra</a> (projected audience: 7,140). The play was set in the future, with war taking place between a seceded Queensland and the rest of the country – another strangely pertinent theme. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CGZJ3GQHGOr","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Matt Whittet’s new play <a href="https://theimpossibleproject.com.au/kindness">Kindness</a> (projected audience: 3,500) was to be directed by Lee Lewis at the Griffin Theatre. This loss feels particularly poignant, as the play looked at the experiences of community kindness – kindness we have all witnessed in 2020. </p>
<p>Whittet says he hopes it is only on hold:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nothing is certain in the world at the moment, which means there’s no promises but always hope.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>… and those that found a new life</h2>
<p>The Impossible Project also finds silver linings.</p>
<p>Sydney performance and visual artist Rakini Devi had planned a project with Melbourne video artist Karl Ockelford. With border closures, they were unable to work together. </p>
<p>Instead, Devi developed a solo project examining the position of women from the Indian diaspora who experience violence, being “lockdowned” and various forms of misogyny. </p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/465289309" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Melbourne musical theatre company Watch This specialises in the work of Stephen Sondheim. It had planned an exhibition of design and creative work for shows spanning seven years of the company’s productions. </p>
<p>Scheduled to start in March at Northcote Town Hall, the exhibition was cancelled six days before opening. But the company was able to re-mount it as a digital documentary series, <a href="https://theimpossibleproject.com.au/theartofmakingart">The Art of Making Art</a>. Through this, Watch This has been able to expand its audience, with the series selected for Canada’s <a href="https://www.socialdistancingfestival.com">Social Distancing Festival</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/406749895" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Further loss</h2>
<p>The Impossible Project documents shows that were meant to appear at the Sydney Opera House, Griffin Theatre, the Riverside Theatre and the Ensemble in Sydney; at Malthouse, the Recital Centre, the Arts Centre and Arts House in Melbourne; at La Boite, QPAC and Queensland Theatre in Brisbane. </p>
<p>There are touring shows scheduled for cities and regional centres. There are festivals – all now cancelled.</p>
<p>We have lost the audiences who haven’t been able to see work in a live venue; the time artists spent developing a new work, only to see it cancelled with no commitment to return; we will, inevitably, lose artists who will give up on the increasingly precarious dream of a creative life.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365715/original/file-20201027-17-ldkgbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Promo image, a man falls through the sky." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365715/original/file-20201027-17-ldkgbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365715/original/file-20201027-17-ldkgbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365715/original/file-20201027-17-ldkgbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365715/original/file-20201027-17-ldkgbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365715/original/file-20201027-17-ldkgbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365715/original/file-20201027-17-ldkgbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365715/original/file-20201027-17-ldkgbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kindness was programmed at Sydney’s Griffin Theatre – its season was cancelled.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When we talk about the impact of this year on the arts sector, we often focus on the economic losses. In April, the Grattan Institute estimated <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-3-in-4-australians-employed-in-the-creative-and-performing-arts-could-lose-their-jobs-136505">up to 75% of people</a> employed in the creative and performing arts could lose their jobs. By May, I Lost My Gig had recorded the loss of income for Australian artists of more than <a href="https://ilostmygig.net.au">A$340 million</a>. </p>
<p>Shows began being cancelled in March. The Federal Government didn’t announce a support package until June. Last week it was revealed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/21/arts-rescue-package-worth-250m-still-waiting-to-be-allocated-senate-estimates-told">none of the $250 million</a> package has been allocated (bar $48 million allowing Screen Australia to underwrite the insurance of films in production, which does not represent money spent). </p>
<p>Without support, more work will be lost.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/too-little-too-late-too-confusing-the-funding-criteria-for-the-arts-covid-package-is-a-mess-145397">Too little, too late, too confusing? The funding criteria for the arts COVID package is a mess</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It is a mystery why the government does not take the cultural sector seriously, or value the arts, or see how it contributes to our society.</p>
<p>We are seeing the arts and humanities <a href="https://theconversation.com/monash-university-plans-to-cut-its-musicology-subjects-why-does-this-matter-147172">removed</a> from our universities, artists left out in the cold during this terrible time, and no indication of a way forward. </p>
<p>This is a loss to Australia on a grand scale. The list of cancelled work in The Impossible Project is not one we want to see continue — but it is inevitable the list will grow.</p>
<p><em>Correction: an earlier version of this story misstated the artists involved in The River Crossing. The crossing was to be performed by professional high wire walkers and Bundjalung community members.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148716/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jo Caust has previously received funding from the Australia Council. She is member of NAVA and the Arts Industry Council (SA). </span></em></p>In a year of lockdowns, The Impossible Project gives life to shows that never reached the stage. More than 150 events are listed on this online archive, and sadly, more are likely to come.Jo Caust, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow (Hon), School of Culture and Communication, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1402342020-09-01T13:29:16Z2020-09-01T13:29:16Z2020 is a year for the history books, but not without digital archives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355613/original/file-20200831-23-d6ypuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C55%2C2048%2C1287&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Canada lags behind some countries with preserving public digital records.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">(Flickr/BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives Canada)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A seasonal change is in the air. With a minimal amount of nostalgia about the dwindling days of this unique summer, let’s turn to how we can make the most of the rest of 2020 — clearly a year for the history books. </p>
<p>As a historian, what concerns me is: What will our history of this unprecedented year look like in a quarter century? As the world is <a href="https://ipolitics.ca/2020/04/14/how-covid-19-will-reshape-global-politics/">reshaped by COVID-19</a>, as well as ongoing protests on a nearly unprecedented scale against racism and police brutality in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/24/us/kenosha-police-shooting.html">United States</a>, <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadian-protesters-march-against-racism-from-coast-to-coast-1.4972882">Canada and</a> around the world, it’s clear that this will be a year for future historians to make sense of. </p>
<p>A child today will be a historian of 2020 in the future. What sources will they turn to? How will they verify scattered memories? How will people tell the story of the tumultuous times that we’re living in today? 2020 may be a year for the history “books” but of course, <a href="https://theconversation.com/historians-archival-research-looks-quite-different-in-the-digital-age-121096">the record we leave behind will be digital in manner</a>. </p>
<p>But right now, Canada, unlike many other countries such as the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/legal-deposit/web-archiving">United Kingdom</a>, <a href="https://www.bnf.fr/fr/archives-de-linternet">France</a>, <a href="http://netarkivet.dk/in-english/">Denmark</a> and others, doesn’t mandate its national library to capture a comprehensive digital record of Canadian life. This needs to change so we can ensure historians of the future have all the sources possible to write a rich, equitable and robust historical record. </p>
<h2>Social movements, virus</h2>
<p>From the role of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/technology/social-media-protests.html">video and social media in sparking and documenting protests</a> to <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-how-td-transformed-its-high-tech-trading-floor-into-a-virtual/">companies</a> and <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/03/17/shifting-unexpectedly-remote-instruction-requires-many-human-solutions-tech">educational institutions</a> that moved online en masse in a matter of days this past March, 2020 will be a year that will be understood through digital media. </p>
<p>With coronavirus isolation, <a href="https://communication.illinois.edu/news/2020-04-10/professor-john-caughlin-navigating-relationships-and-technology-during-covid-19">digital media has been enormously important for our interactions with colleagues, friends and loved ones</a>. </p>
<p>Some trends: Zoom’s daily meeting participants went from <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/2/21277006/zoom-q1-2021-earnings-coronavirus-pandemic-work-from-home">10 million in December to 300 million in April</a> and we <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/stop-doomscrolling/">“doomscroll”</a> through social media feeds before bed. As <em>The New York Times</em> explained: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/07/technology/coronavirus-internet-use.html">“The virus changed the way we internet.”</a></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Corner outside of a tall glass building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355619/original/file-20200831-14-5eu22b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355619/original/file-20200831-14-5eu22b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355619/original/file-20200831-14-5eu22b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355619/original/file-20200831-14-5eu22b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355619/original/file-20200831-14-5eu22b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355619/original/file-20200831-14-5eu22b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355619/original/file-20200831-14-5eu22b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Today, archival work means considering digital records. Here, Library and Archives Canada’s Preservation Centre in Gatineau, Que., seen in May 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">(David Knox. Library and Archives Canada, IMG_1982 /Flickr)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Minute-by-minute information</h2>
<p>Because in part the British Library is <a href="https://www.bl.uk/legal-deposit/web-archiving">empowered to collect millions of their web pages every year</a> through the use of “legal deposit” power, a historian in the U.K. will have a rich record to explore.</p>
<p>For example, what did Britons think of senior adviser Dominic Cummings’ 418-kilometre <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52811168">trip from London to Durham</a> while his wife was unwell? A researcher will be able to visit the British Library (in most cases, an <a href="https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/info/faq">in-person visit is required</a> due to legal reasons) to consult not only social media feeds of everyday researchers, but news websites, U.K. blogs <a href="https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/2446">and beyond</a>. </p>
<p>They will be able to draw on nearly everything published on the U.K. web in 2020. Right now a researcher can already view thousands of pages — and, most importantly, these are stewarded by the British Library for future preservation.</p>
<h2>Legal deposit</h2>
<p>This information will be accessible to our future researcher thanks to the power of legal deposit. Legal deposit is <a href="https://www.ifla.org/node/8303">defined by the International Federation of Library Associations</a> as a “statutory obligation [that] requires publishers, distributors and, in some countries, printers, to freely provide copies of their publications to the national collection,” and is a power that builds the collections of national libraries including <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/services/legal-deposit/Pages/legal-deposit.aspx">Library and Archives Canada</a> (LAC).</p>
<p>What this has meant in practice is that when a book or publication is published, there has been a legal requirement to deposit the book with a national library.</p>
<p>What happens when a publication moves <em>online</em>? What about blogs? Should they have a similar responsibility to deposit their material? And, critically, does a national library have a duty to preserve this information at scale?</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bl.uk/">British Library</a> has, since April 2013, been “<a href="https://www.bl.uk/legal-deposit/web-archiving">entitled to copy U.K.-published material from the internet for archiving under legal deposit</a>.” In practice, this means that it annually archives websites of the U.K.; it also supplements this archive through curated collections such as the earlier mentioned one around <a href="https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/2446">global pandemics</a>. Those tweets, blogs, health websites and so on all form part of the historical record — and once archived, there is no legal ability to retroactively delete them.</p>
<p>Crucially, sweeping collections of material under legal deposit means that material is being amassed that does not seem important <em>today</em> — but could be invaluable to a historian in years to come.</p>
<h2>Canada should aggressively follow</h2>
<p>The remarkably forward thinking <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/L-7.7/"><em>Library and Archives of Canada Act</em></a> of 2004 gives Library and Archives Canada similar powers. <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/L-7.7/page-1.html#h-345269">One section of the act</a>, for example, gives the institution the power to take a “representative sample of the documentary material of interest to Canada that is accessible to the public without restriction through the internet or any similar medium.”</p>
<p>These laws, however, aren’t used to their fullest. Canada’s national library doesn’t carry out a comprehensive snapshot of the entire Canadian web domain, meaning that countless voices will be lost for future historians.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A finger pushing a digital button with documents behind it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355650/original/file-20200831-14-n5zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355650/original/file-20200831-14-n5zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355650/original/file-20200831-14-n5zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355650/original/file-20200831-14-n5zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355650/original/file-20200831-14-n5zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355650/original/file-20200831-14-n5zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355650/original/file-20200831-14-n5zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The notion of legal deposit could be expanded in Canada to cover a comprehensive snapshot of the entire Canadian web domain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is not to paint too dire a picture. Library and Archives Canada does a great job of capturing material of interest. During COVID-19, it has selectively captured some <a href="https://netpreserveblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/15/documenting-covid-19-and-the-great-confinement-in-canada/">38 million digital assets related to COVID-19 by July 2020</a>, which add to their robust web archives including the Government of Canada web archive, which collects and maintains a comprehensive record of federal government’s websites. </p>
<p>Increasingly, it’s making collections, such as <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/aboriginal-heritage/Pages/truth-reconciliation-commission-web-archive.aspx">the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s</a> collection, available online. In doing so, Library and Archives Canada is explicitly noting its collecting powers under the 2004 act, suggesting an increasing willingness to share these materials. </p>
<p>We should laud this great work, and use it as a launchpad for the comprehensive collection of all Canadian material.</p>
<h2>Patchwork collecting: not enough</h2>
<p>While Library and Archives Canada has been collecting material for COVID-19, including social media hashtags as well as media and non-media related websites, even <a href="https://netpreserveblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/15/documenting-covid-19-and-the-great-confinement-in-canada/">900 websites being regularly collected</a> is patchwork compared to the sheer amount of information published by Canadians online every day. </p>
<p>To do justice to what’s happening around us, and to make sure that historians of the future can understand this moment, the institution and policy-makers need to move quickly. </p>
<p>We need to aim to collect the entire Canadian web domain on an ongoing basis, both during and after COVID, to enable future researchers to understand our country. This will require additional funds to Library and Archives Canada. But, at what better time?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140234/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Milligan receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Compute Canada, Microsoft Research, and the United States Institute of Museum and Library Services. He serves on Library and Archive Canada's Acquisition Advisory Committee, but this piece represents his personal opinion.</span></em></p>Policymakers should mandate Canada’s national library to archive the entire Canadian web domain so future reserachers can make sense of 2020 and ongoing responses to the pandemic.Ian Milligan, Associate Professor of History, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1338242020-03-17T15:06:18Z2020-03-17T15:06:18ZThe hidden history of women’s filmmaking in Britain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321039/original/file-20200317-60932-gi0dee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C8%2C781%2C567&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ruth Stuart, the filmmaker of To Egypt and Back with Imperial Airways (1933)</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EAFA</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The history of women making excellent films but not having their achievements fully acknowledged stretches back a very long way. This was most recently seen in Pamela B Green’s documentary <a href="https://benaturalthemovie.com/">Be Natural</a> about the “lost” foremother of film, Alice Guy-Blaché. The French-American filmmaker was largely forgotten in formative accounts of the history of cinema. This was despite her important innovations, including making what is arguably the first narrative film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d7FXY6veHk">La Fée aux Choux</a> (1896). </p>
<p>It is vital historical work to recover women’s filmmaking, which is always prone to being overlooked, downplayed or forgotten. Organisations like the <a href="https://wfpp.columbia.edu/">Women Film Pioneers Project</a> and the <a href="https://womensfilmandtelevisionhistory.wordpress.com/">Women’s Film and Television History Network</a>, alongside other initiatives and people, have laboured to prevent its erasure from the historical record, but there is always more to be done to ensure its preservation and celebration. Archiving is key to this.</p>
<p>The recently released <a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/documents/invisible-innovators-final.pdf">report</a>, Invisible Innovators: Making Women’s Filmmaking Visible across the UK Film Archives, strives to rewrite women into history. Commissioned by <a href="http://www.filmarchives.org.uk/">Film Archives UK</a>, the report surveys work by women held in UK media archives and proposes strategies for making it more accessible. It suggests there are incredible riches waiting to be unlocked, and compelling stories that deserve to be more widely known.</p>
<h2>Creative amateurs</h2>
<p>Amateur film of various kinds constitutes a large proportion of those collections. Many are home movies, which women were <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-british-women-amateur-filmmakers.html">actively encouraged</a> to make at the advent of home movie-making technology in the early 20th century. This was because it was seen as an extension of their roles as wives, mothers and custodians of family keepsakes. </p>
<p>Although some amateur films might have interest solely as historical or familial records, others are much more aesthetically inventive. Such films suggest how filmmaking could become a vehicle for unleashing women’s creativity.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YEz1OcmCLl4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>For instance, one of the most intriguing filmmakers discussed in the report is Ruth Stuart. A teenage prodigy, she was described as “the maestra of Manchester” by Movie Maker magazine after her 1933 travelogue <a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3284">To Egypt and Back</a> (begun when she was only 16) and her 1934 apocalyptic vision <a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3256">Doomsday</a>. Both won the highest accolades for non-professional work from American Cinematographer and Amateur Cine World. </p>
<p>However, a gendered double standard was in operation around the status of amateur film at this time. While amateur filmmaking could act as a launchpad for the professional filmmaking careers of talented young men like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/nov/28/ken-russell">Ken Russell</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0914386/">Peter Watkins</a> – who both went from amateur filmmaking to the BBC and onto acclaimed feature film production – no such leverage seems to have been available to their female equivalents, however talented. As such, Stuart’s filmography is frustratingly brief. Little is known about her life or why she appears to have stopped making films altogether by the 1940s. </p>
<p>Clearly some women relished their adventures as hobbyist filmmakers and enjoyed the freedom of amateurism. In the flourishing cine club culture from the 1930s to 1960s, women were key participants, and not merely as helpful companions or tea-makers. As early as 1928, an all-female amateur filmmaking team put together the madcap comedy <a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3823">Sally Sallies Forth</a>. Featuring an all-female cast, it was a rare gynocentric achievement.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320829/original/file-20200316-27708-r7bdma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320829/original/file-20200316-27708-r7bdma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320829/original/file-20200316-27708-r7bdma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320829/original/file-20200316-27708-r7bdma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320829/original/file-20200316-27708-r7bdma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320829/original/file-20200316-27708-r7bdma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320829/original/file-20200316-27708-r7bdma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A still from the 1928 film Sally Sallies Forth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EAFA</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More often women worked collaboratively with men, but this has resulted in systemic problems in their work’s attribution. When the prize-winning films made by married couple Laurie and Stuart Day were discussed in amateur film magazines, it was automatically assumed that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09612025.2019.1703541">Stuart was the main filmmaker</a> and Laurie just his wifely assistant. Evidence from the films themselves seems to suggest that actually the reverse was true. However, these kinds of assumptions have impacted the cataloguing of films when deposited in archives, inadvertently effacing women’s contributions.</p>
<h2>Films by female filmmakers to watch:</h2>
<p>Women’s films should be a priority for digitisation, and archival catalogues and records should accurately reflect female contributors. If all relevant works across all film collections could be marked with an easily searchable term like “woman filmmaker”, it would really help to bring these women’s works out from the shadows. </p>
<p>Here are five films by female filmmakers that have been successfully digitised from the <a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/">East Anglian Film Archive</a> which give a flavour of the range and richness of women’s filmmaking across the 20th century:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3256">Doomsday</a> (1934): Ruth Stuart’s haunting vision of a very English apocalypse.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/2633">1938, the Last Year of Peace</a> (1948): Laurie and Stuart Day’s montage of memories of suburban family life just before the outbreak of the second world war.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3293">England May Be Home</a> (1957): A moving documentary about Italian migrant workers. Bedfordshire cine-club member Margaret Hodkin is part of the team behind this.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/4131">The Stray</a> (1965): Marjorie Martin’s moody tale of an errant wife with laddered stockings returning to her taciturn shepherd husband. </p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3580">Make-Up</a> (1978): A hand-drawn animation about “putting on a face” from Joanna Fryer, who went on to work on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A3THighARU">The Snowman</a>(1982).</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133824/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are many gems of female filmmaking in the archives that have been overlooked and should be made accessible to contemporary audiencesMelanie Williams, Reader in Film and Television Studies, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1309912020-02-13T19:20:22Z2020-02-13T19:20:22ZHistoric Iwo Jima footage shows individual Marines amid the larger battle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313579/original/file-20200204-41507-vdsqru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C537%2C387&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two Marines in the Marine Corps' 5th Division cemetery on Iwo Jima pay their respects to a fallen comrade.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MarineCorps/id/2182/rec/1">United States Marine Corps Film Repository, USMC 101863 (16mm film frame)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When most Americans think of the World War II battle for Iwo Jima – if they think of it at all, more than 75 years later – they think of one image: Marines raising the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest point. </p>
<p>That moment, captured in black and white by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal and as a color film by Marine Sergeant William Genaust, is powerful, embodying the spirit of the Marine Corps. </p>
<p>But these pictures are far from the only images of the bloodiest fight in the Marines’ history. A larger library of film, and the men captured on them, is similarly emotionally affecting. It can even bring Americans alive today closer to a war that ended in the middle of the last century.</p>
<p>Take for instance, just one scene: Two Marines kneel with a dog before a grave marker. It is in the final frames of a film documenting the dedication of one of the three cemeteries on the island. Those two Marines are among hundreds present to remember the more than 6,000 Americans killed on the island in over a month of fighting. The sequence is intentionally framed by the cinematographer, who was clearly looking for the right image to end the roll of film in his camera.</p>
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<p>I came across this film clip in my work as a curator of a collection of motion picture films shot by Marine Corps photographers from World War II through the 1970s. In a <a href="https://digital.library.sc.edu/marinecorps/">partnership</a> between the History Division of the Marine Corps and the University of South Carolina, where I work, we are digitizing these films, seeking to provide direct public access to the video and expand historical understanding of the Marine Corps’ role in society. </p>
<p>Over two years of scanning, I have come to realize that our work also enables a more powerful relationship with the past by fostering individual connections with videos, something that the digitizing of the large quantity of footage makes possible.</p>
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<h2>The campaign within the battle</h2>
<p>Iwo Jima, an island in the western Pacific less than 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, was considered a key potential stepping stone toward an invasion of Japan itself.</p>
<p>During the battle to take the island from the Japanese, more than 70,000 Marines and attached Army and Navy personnel set foot on Iwo Jima. That included combat soldiers, but also medical corpsmen, chaplains, service and supply soldiers and others. More than <a href="https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/b/battle-for-iwo-jima.html">6,800 Americans were killed on the island and on ships</a> and landing craft aiding in the attack; more than 19,200 were wounded.</p>
<p>More than 50 Marine combat cameramen operated across the eight square miles of Iwo Jima during the battle, which stretched from Feb. 19 to March 26, 1945. Many shot still images, but at least 26 shot motion pictures. Three of these Marine cinematographers were killed in action. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Curator Greg Wilsbacher discusses selected clips from the newly digitized archive.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even before the battle began, Marine Corps leaders knew they wanted a comprehensive visual account of the battle. Beyond a historical record, combat photography from Iwo Jima would assist in planning and training for the invasion of the Japanese main islands. Some Marine cameramen were assigned to the front lines of individual units, and others to specific activities, like engineering and medical operations.</p>
<p>Most of the cameramen on Iwo Jima used 100-foot film reels that could capture about two and a half minutes of film. Sgt. Genaust, who shot the color sequence atop Suribachi, shot at least 25 reels – just over an hour of film – before he was killed, roughly halfway through the campaign. </p>
<p>Other cameramen who survived the entire battle produced significantly more. Sgt. Francis Cockrell was assigned to document the work of the 5th Division’s medical activities. Shooting at least 89 reels, he probably produced almost four hours of film. </p>
<p>Sgt. Louis L. Louft fought with the 13th Marines, an artillery regiment; his more than 100 film reels likely resulted in more than four hours of content. Landing on the beach with engineers of the 4th Division on Feb. 25, 1945, Pfc. Angelo S. Abramo compiled over three hours of material in the month of fighting he witnessed.</p>
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<p>Even taking a conservative average of an hour of film from each of the 26 combat cameramen, that suggests there was at least 24 hours of unique film from the battle. Many surviving elements of this record are now part of the film library of the Marine Corps History Division, which we’re working with. The remainder are cataloged by the National Archives and Records Administration.</p>
<p>While military historians visiting the History Division in the past have used this large library, the bulk of its films have not been readily available to the public, something that mass digitization is finally making possible.</p>
<p>For many decades, the visual records made by Marines have been seen by the public only piecemeal, often with selected portions used as mere stock footage in films, documentaries and news programs, chosen because a shot has action, not because of the historical context of the imagery. </p>
<p>Even when they are used responsibly by documentary filmmakers, the editing and selection of scenes imposes the filmmaker’s interpretation on the images. As a historian and archivist, though, I believe it is important for people to directly engage with historical sources of all types, including the films from Iwo Jima.</p>
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<h2>The ‘highest and purest’ form</h2>
<p>After the battle, the Americans buried their dead in temporary cemeteries, awaiting transportation back to the U.S. The film segment just before the graveside scene shows a service honoring the Americans of all backgrounds who had bled and died together.</p>
<p>At that service, Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, the Marines’ first-ever Jewish chaplain, gave a eulogy that has become one of the Marine Corps’ most treasured texts. Noting the diversity of the dead, Gittelsohn said, “<a href="https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Marine-Corps-History-Division/Frequently-Requested-Topics/Historical-Documents-Orders-and-Speeches/The-Purest-Democracy/">Here lie officers and men</a>, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor … together. Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color.” </p>
<p>Gittelsohn called their collective sacrifice “the <a href="https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Marine-Corps-History-Division/Frequently-Requested-Topics/Historical-Documents-Orders-and-Speeches/The-Purest-Democracy/">highest and purest democracy</a>.”</p>
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<h2>Connecting to the present</h2>
<p>After the dedication ceremonies, <a href="https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MarineCorps/id/2182/rec/1">Marines walked the 5th Division cemetery</a>, looking for familiar names. The photographers were there, and one recorded the footage of the two Marines – names not known – and the dog, at a grave with only the number 322 as a visible marking.</p>
<p>The image stood out. The two Marines looking directly at the camera seemed to reach across the decades to compel a response. Researchers at the History Division identified the Marine beneath marker 322 as Pfc. Ernest Langbeen from Chicago. It felt appropriate and important to add his name to the online description for that film, so I did.</p>
<p>I then located members of the Langbeen family, and told them that this part of their family’s history existed in the History Division’s collections and was now preserved and available online after more than seven decades.</p>
<p>Speaking with the family, I learned more about the Marine in grave 322. One of the two Marines in the picture may well be his best friend from before the war, a friend who joined the Corps with him. They asked to serve together and were assigned to the same unit, the 13th Regiment.</p>
<p>Now, family members who never knew this Marine have a new connection to their history and the country’s history. More connections will come for others. The digital archive we’re building will make it easier for researchers and the public at large to explore the military and personal history in each frame of every film.</p>
<p>The visual library of more than 80 online videos from Iwo Jima carries in it countless Pfc. Langbeens, ordinary Americans whose lives were disrupted by a global war. Each film holds traces of lives cut short or otherwise irrevocably altered.</p>
<p>The films are a reminder that, more than 75 years after the end of World War II, all Americans remain tied to Iwo Jima, as well as battlegrounds across the world like <a href="https://www.historynet.com/breaking-the-gustav-line.htm">Monte Cassino</a>, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-peleliu">Peleliu</a>, <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bataan-death-march-begins">Bataan</a> and <a href="https://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/europe/normandy-american-cemetery">Colleville-sur-mer</a>. Americans may find their relatives in this footage, or they may not. But what they will find is evidence of the sacrifices made by those fighting on their behalf, sacrifices that connect each and every American to the battle of Iwo Jima.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130991/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The United States Marine Corps Film Repository at the University of South Carolina is made possible in part through the generous support of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, the Parris Island Historical and Museum Society as well as donations from Marine Corps Leagues and individuals.</span></em></p>Films of the battle for Iwo Jima, being digitized 75 years after they were made, offer connections and lessons for Americans of today.Greg Wilsbacher, Curator of Newsfilm and Military Collections, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1276842020-01-06T12:06:54Z2020-01-06T12:06:54ZBuilding a digital archive for decaying paper documents, preserving centuries of records about enslaved people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308376/original/file-20200102-11939-1kf1r17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C30%2C2038%2C1333&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Converting aging paper documents to digital archives can be a painstaking effort.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Societies Digital Archive</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Paper documents are still priceless records of the past, even in a digital world. Primary sources stored in local archives throughout Latin America, for example, describe a centuries-old multiethnic society grappling with questions of race, class and religion. </p>
<p>However, paper archives are vulnerable to flooding, humidity, insects, and rodents, among other threats. Political instability can cut off money used to maintain archives and institutional neglect can transform precious records into moldy rubbish. </p>
<p>Working closely with colleagues from around the world, I build digital archives and specialized tools that help us learn from those records, which trace the lives of free and enslaved people of African descent in the Americas from the 1500s to the 1800s. Our effort, the <a href="https://www.slavesocieties.org/">Slave Societies Digital Archive</a>, is one of many humanities projects that have accumulated substantial collections of digital images of paper documents.</p>
<p>The goal is to ensure this information – including some from documents that no longer exist physically – is accessible to future generations. </p>
<p>But preserving history by taking high-resolution photographs of centuries-old documents is only the beginning. Technological advances help scholars and archivists like me do a better job of preserving these records and learning from them, but don’t always make it easy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An archive in Cuba contains paper treasures that are hard to use and study – even in person.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Societies Digital Archive</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Collecting documents</h2>
<p>Since 2003, the Slave Societies Digital Archive has collected more than 700,000 digitized images of historical records documenting the lives of millions of Africans and people of African descent in North and South America.</p>
<p>Members of the core team, from universities in the U.S., Canada, and Brazil, travel to project sites throughout Latin America, where they train local students and archivists to digitize ecclesiastical and government records from their communities. We give these communities the cameras, computers and other hardware they need to digitally preserve documents piled in the corners of 18th-century church basements, or about to be discarded by space-crunched municipal archives.</p>
<p>We also teach them a crucial skill for archiving and retrieval: how to create <a href="https://www.loc.gov/standards/metadata.html">metadata</a>, the descriptive information to help people find what interests them – like whether a document is a marriage certificate or a baptism record, and what year and town it’s from. Good metadata allows visitors to the project website to, for example, search for all baptism records from 17th-century Colombia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A lot of people get involved, both teaching and learning how to properly photograph documents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Societies Digital Archive</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>From digitization to preservation</h2>
<p>Over time, we’ve gotten much better at digitizing documents. In older images, it’s not uncommon to see the photographer’s finger straying in from the side of the frame. Some of those older images are stored as relatively low-resolution JPEG files, a format that compresses the image file size by deleting some data when it’s saved. Most of those files are still completely legible even when a viewer zooms in, but some are not and will need to be digitized again in the future.</p>
<p>Our more recent preservation adheres to the rigorous standards of <a href="https://www.bl.uk/">the British Library</a>, which funds much of our work. Those images are taken in very high resolutions and stored in multiple file formats including <a href="https://www.archives.gov/preservation/products/definitions/tif.html">TIFF</a>, which remains the archival standard.</p>
<p>Transforming a collection of digitized images into a true digital archive is a time-consuming and detail-oriented effort. Early in this process, we ran into a curious problem involving photographs taken during our first few digitization efforts. Modern software frequently misinterpreted the orientation of these images, giving us pages rotated 90 degrees to the right or left or even completely upside down. In cases where an entire volume was rotated in the same incorrect way, it could be fixed automatically, but others with a range of errors had to be corrected by hand to let researchers work more easily with the material.</p>
<p>We’ve also found that data file names can cause problems. Many cameras assign images default names – like DSCN9126.jpg – that aren’t useful for figuring out what the pictures are. We have to rename each image in a standard way that indicates how it fits into our collection. </p>
<p>For the time being we’ve chosen simply to number images sequentially within each volume; another reasonable option would be to prefix each of these numbers with an ID referring to the volume the image comes from.</p>
<p>These aren’t major hurdles, but they and others along similar lines take some time to figure out and address properly. But this effort pays off when people hoping to explore the collection have an easier time finding and using our images.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">With care, digital preservation can bring new life to crumbling documents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Societies Digital Archive</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Where to store them?</h2>
<p>Once we’ve captured the images, we need to save them somewhere. </p>
<p>At present, the Slave Societies Digital Archive collection is close to 20 terabytes – <a href="https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=20+terabytes">roughly the space needed to store all the text</a> in the Library of Congress.</p>
<p>Few institutions have the resources, personnel or expertise needed to store humanities data at such large scales. Data storage isn’t exorbitantly expensive, but it’s also not cheap – especially when the data needs to be accessed regularly, as opposed to being stored in a static backup or archival copy.</p>
<p>For many years, the Vanderbilt University Library hosted the data, but we outgrew what that organization could afford. We had been backing up many of our most important records on the Digital Preservation Network, a consortium of universities that pooled resources to fund a reliable digital storage system for scholarly production. But that organization <a href="https://duraspace.org/the-digital-preservation-network-dpn-to-cease-operations/">shut down in late 2018</a> after consulting with each member organization to ensure that no data would be lost.</p>
<p>Our path has led to <a href="https://gizmodo.com/what-is-the-cloud-and-where-is-it-1682276210">the cloud</a>, computers in technology companies’ massive server-warehouse buildings that we access remotely to store and retrieve information. At the moment, multiple copies of our entire dataset are stored on servers on opposite sides of North America. As a result, we’re far less likely to lose our data than at any previous point in the project’s history.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">If you can read this, you’re very highly trained.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://essss.library.vanderbilt.edu/islandora/object/essss%3A6554">The Conversation screenshot of Slave Societies Digital Archive file</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Opening access</h2>
<p>Storing these records in secure systems is another part of the equation, but we also need to make sure that they’re accessible to the people who want to see them. </p>
<p>Our documents, typically written in archaic Spanish or Portuguese, are <a href="https://essss.library.vanderbilt.edu/islandora/object/essss%3A6554">very hard to read</a>. Even native speakers need special training to decipher what they say.</p>
<p>For several years, we’ve been producing manual transcriptions of some of our most noteworthy records, such as a volume of baptisms from late 16th-century Havana. But that takes 10 to 15 minutes per page – meaning that transcribing our entire collection would take more than 100,000 hours. </p>
<p>Other projects have <a href="http://www.discoverfreedmen.org">used volunteers to do similar work</a>, but that approach is less likely to be the solution for our archive because of the linguistic skills required to read our documents.</p>
<p>We are exploring automating the transcription process using handwriting recognition technology. Those systems need more work, particularly when dealing with centuries-old handwriting styles, but <a href="https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus">some researchers are already making progress</a>. </p>
<p>We are also looking at ways to identify the people and places mentioned in our records, making them searchable and connecting them to <a href="http://enslaved.org">other similar datasets</a>. </p>
<p>As we and other researchers connect our work, the stories contained in these old documents will come to life and bring new insight to modern scholars.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127684/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Genkins has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</span></em></p>Centuries’ worth of important information is stored on paper – which can decay, burn or get eaten by pests. Peek inside the process of making all that data digital.Daniel Genkins, Postdoctoral Fellow in History, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1210962019-08-19T19:03:49Z2019-08-19T19:03:49ZHistorians’ archival research looks quite different in the digital age<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288381/original/file-20190816-192262-1d2xs1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Today, and into the future, consulting archival documents increasingly means reading them on a screen. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Our society’s historical record is undergoing a dramatic transformation.</p>
<p>Think of all the information that you create today that will be part of the record for tomorrow. <a href="https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx">More than half of the world’s population is online</a> and may be doing at least some of the following: communicating by email, sharing thoughts on Twitter or social media or publishing on the web. </p>
<p>Governments and institutions are no different. The American National Archives and Records Administration, responsible for American official records, “<a href="https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/leaders-share-national-archives-vision-for-a-digital-future">will no longer take records in paper form after December 31, 2022.</a>” </p>
<p>In Canada, under Library and Archives Canada’s <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/services/government-information-resources/guidelines/Pages/introduction.aspx">Digital by 2017</a> plan, records are now preserved in the format that they were created in: that means a Word document or email will be part of our historical record as a digital object.</p>
<p>Traditionally, exploring archives meant largely physically collecting, searching and reviewing paper records. Today, and into the future, consulting archival documents increasingly means reading them on a screen. </p>
<p>This brings with it opportunity — imagine being able to search for keywords across millions of documents, leading to radically faster search times — but also challenge, as the number of electronic documents increases exponentially. </p>
<p>As I’ve argued in my recent book <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/history-in-the-age-of-abundance--products-9780773556973.php"><em>History in the Age of Abundance</em></a>, digitized sources present extraordinary opportunities as well as daunting challenges for historians. Universities will need to incorporate new approaches to how they train historians, either through historical programs or newly-emerging interdisciplinary programs in the <a href="https://guides.library.duke.edu/digital_humanities">digital humanities</a>. </p>
<p>The ever-growing scale and scope of digital records suggests technical challenges: historians need new skills to plumb these for meaning, trends, voices and other currents, to piece together an understanding of what happened in the past.</p>
<p>There are also ethical challenges, which, although not new in the field of history, now bear particular contemporary attention and scrutiny.</p>
<p>Historians have long relied on librarians and archivists to bring order to information. Part of their work has involved ethical choices about what to preserve, curate, catalogue and display and how to do so. Today, many digital sources are now at our fingertips — albeit in raw, often uncatalogued, format. Historians are entering uncharted territory.</p>
<h2>Digital abundance</h2>
<p>Traditionally, as the late, great American historian Roy Rosenzweig of George Mason University argued, historians operated <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/108.3.735">in a scarcity-based economy: we wished we had more information about the past</a>.
Today, hundreds of billions of websites preserved at the <a href="https://archive.org/about/">Internet Archive</a> alone is more archival information than scholars have ever had access to. People who never before would have been included in archives are part of these collections. </p>
<p>Take web archiving, for example, which is the preservation of websites for future use. Since 2005, Library and Archives Canada’s <a href="http://webarchive.bac-lac.gc.ca/?lang=en">web archiving program</a> has collected over <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Historical-Web-and-Digital-Humanities-The-Case-of-National-Web-Domains/Brugger-Laursen/p/book/9781138294318">36 terabytes of information</a> with over <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/about-us/annual-reports/annual-report-2017-2018/Pages/annual-report-2017-2018.aspx">800 million items</a>. </p>
<p>Even historians who study the middle ages or the 19th centuries are being affected by this dramatic transformation. They’re now frequently consulting records that began life as traditional parchment or paper, but were subsequently digitized. </p>
<h2>Historians’ digital literacy</h2>
<p>Our research team at the University of Waterloo and York University, <a href="https://archivesunleashed.org">collaborating on the Archives Unleashed Project</a>, uses sources like the GeoCities.com web archive. This is a collection of websites published by users between 1994 and 2009. We have some 186 million web pages to use, created by seven million users.</p>
<p>Our traditional approaches for examining historical sources simply won’t work on the scale of hundreds of millions of documents created by one website alone. We can’t read page by page nor can we simply count keywords or outsource our intellectual labour to a search engine like Google. </p>
<p>As historians examining these archives, we need a fundamental understanding of how records were produced, preserved and accessed. Such questions and modes of analysis are continuous with historians’ traditional training: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24048">Why were these records created</a>? Who created or preserved them? And, what <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1461444811414834"><em>wasn’t</em> preserved</a>? </p>
<p>Second, historians who confront such voluminous data need to develop more contemporary skills to process it. Such skills can range from knowing how to take images of documents and make them searchable using <a href="http://doi.org/10.3138/chr.694">Optical Character Recognition</a>, to the ability to not only count how often given terms appear, but also what contexts they appear in and how concepts begin to appear alongside other concepts. </p>
<p>You might be interested in finding the “Johnson” in “Boris Johnson,” but not the “Johnson & Johnson Company.” Just searching for “Johnson” is going to get a lot of misleading results: keyword searching won’t get you there. Yet emergent research in the field of <a href="http://www.nltk.org/">natural language processing</a> might!</p>
<p>Historians need to develop basic algorithmic and data fluency. They don’t need to be programmers, but they do need to think about how code and data operates, how digital objects are stored and created and humans’ role at all stages.</p>
<h2>Deep fake vs. history</h2>
<p>As historical work is increasingly defined by digital records, historians can contribute to critical conversations around the role of algorithms and truth in the digital age. While both tech companies and some scholars have advanced the idea that technology and the internet will strengthen democratic participation, historical research can help uncover the <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality">impact of socio-economic power throughout communications and media history</a>. Historians can also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/11/what-naomi-wolf-cokie-roberts-teach-us-about-need-historians/">help amateurs parse the sea of historical information and sources now on the Web</a>. </p>
<p>One of the defining skills of a historian is an understanding of historical context. Historians instinctively read documents, whether they are newspaper columns, government reports or tweets, and contextualise them in terms of not only who wrote them, but their environment, culture and time period. </p>
<p>As societies lose their physical paper trails and increasingly rely on digital information, historians, and their grasp of context, will become more important than ever. </p>
<p>As deepfakes — <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1365712718807226">products of artificial intelligence that can alter images or video clips</a> — <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bill-hader-tom-cruise-seth-rogen-deepfake-871154/">increase in popularity online</a>, both our media environment and our historical record will increasingly be full of misinformation. </p>
<p>Western societies’ traditional archives — such as those held by <a href="http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Pages/home.aspx">Library and Archives Canada</a> or the <a href="https://www.archives.gov">National Archives and Records Administration</a> — contain (and have always contained) misinformation, misrepresentation and biased worldviews, among other flaws. </p>
<p>Historians are specialists in critically reading documents and then seeking to confirm them. They synthesise their findings with a <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-landscape-of-history-9780195171570">broad array of additional sources and voices</a>. Historians tie together <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/history-manifesto/big-questions-big-data/F60D7E21EFBD018F5410FB315FBA4590/core-reader">big pictures and findings</a>, which <a href="https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/Why-History-Matters/?K=9781137604071">helps us understand today’s world</a>.</p>
<p>The work of a historian might look a lot different in the 21st century — exploring databases, parsing data — but the application of their fundamental skills of seeking context and accumulating knowledge will serve both society and them well in the digital age.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121096/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Milligan receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, the United States Institute of Museum and Library Services, Compute Canada, and the University of Waterloo.</span></em></p>As our societies lose paper trails and increasingly rely on digital information, historians, and their grasps of context, will become more important than ever.Ian Milligan, Associate Professor of History, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1191312019-06-25T17:54:35Z2019-06-25T17:54:35ZThousands of recently discovered photographs document life in Uganda during Idi Amin’s reign<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280314/original/file-20190619-171245-aoouoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Idi Amin at a press conference in Jjaja Marina, Uganda in July 1975.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2015, researchers working in the storeroom at the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation forced open the lock on an unremarkable filing cabinet. </p>
<p>Inside were thousands of small wax envelopes, neatly arranged in rows, each containing a number of medium-format photographic negatives. In all there were 70,000 images. The vast majority of them date to the 1970s and the presidency of Idi Amin. </p>
<p>Amin is one of the 20th century’s most notorious dictators. In a <a href="https://www.pbs.org/tpt/dictators-playbook/">recent PBS television series</a>, he features alongside Kim Il Sung, Mussolini and other “Profiles in Tyranny.” In Uganda, the memory of the Amin years has been <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17531055.2016.1272297">suppressed by a government keen to promote political amnesia</a>. There are no memorials to the dead; neither are there monuments or other institutions that encourage deliberation over the Amin years. </p>
<p>These photographs offer one of the first opportunities for public reflection, and a small selection of them – about 150 images – are now on display at the Uganda Museum in Kampala. The exhibition, which we helped curate, is titled “The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin” and will be open until the end of 2019. For Ugandans and other visitors it is a place where a traumatic and divisive history can be assessed. </p>
<h2>Amin’s aggressive populism</h2>
<p>Idi Amin came to power in 1971 <a href="https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2018/01/today-in-history-idi-amin-overthrows-president-milton-obote-in-uganda/">after overthrowing the government of Milton Obote</a>, the president who had presided over Uganda’s independence from British colonial rule. </p>
<p>Obote had relied on state-run media to amplify his political power, and Amin inherited a powerful network of radio stations. The extensive reach of official media encouraged Amin and his officials to think of themselves as spokesmen for Ugandan commoners. Issues that had formerly been decided behind closed doors were discussed openly; matters that had once been determined by experts were made subject to the popular will. For some people it was hugely empowering. For others – especially for civil servants and other professionals – the Amin government’s aggressive populism was a mortal threat. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Idi Amin playing an accordion on Buvuma Island in October 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Photographers were a constant presence on the occasions when Amin and his officials addressed the public. For the whole period of his presidency, a dedicated team of photographers from Uganda’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1472586X.2018.1424989">Ministry of Information</a> followed Amin around the country, snapping photos at press conferences, rallies, parties and other events. </p>
<p>As far as we know, very few of the photos they took were ever printed or published. The film was developed, and then the negatives were placed in envelopes, labeled and placed in a cabinet. </p>
<p>This had been, until now, an unseen archive.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ministry of Information photographers take a smoke break in January 1978.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Making a show of criminality</h2>
<p>So why were these photos taken? </p>
<p>It seems that they served, primarily, as documentation. </p>
<p>Amin’s administration governed Uganda with the fervor and energy of a military campaign. It targeted otherwise obscure social issues – smuggling, overcharging consumers, the dominance of Asian business interests in the economy, the cleanliness of city streets – and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17531055.2012.755314">transformed them into urgent political problems that demanded action</a>. </p>
<p>For example, in 1972, tens of thousands of South Asians were obliged, <a href="https://youtu.be/M2OAdq2h8eU?t=21">by presidential decree</a>, to leave Uganda. The Amin government labeled them as usurpers of black Ugandans’ economic power, a foreign minority whose usurious self-interest ran against the majority. </p>
<p>The cameras made the evils of usury, stealing and smuggling visible. People accused of criminal acts were paraded before the cameras, with crowds often gathered to witness the occasion. There, the evidence was laid out for all to see. Here are jerrycans full of smuggled paraffin, arranged in long rows; there are neat piles of hoarded cash, signifying the evil of South Asians’ dominance of the economy; there are bottles of gin, stacked up around an accused smuggler. </p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-418" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/418/0380a6b007d9ac684f40d5a9f12727ca7f2f1eab/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The camera brought the judgment of the Ugandan commonwealth to bear in specific times and in specific places. In the presence of photographers, campaigners could show themselves to be acting in the interest of the majority. In the presence of a camera, the struggles and exertions of the decade could be seen as historically consequential. </p>
<p>The Amin government’s photographers were part of a media ensemble that helped craft a narrative of meaning, direction and national purpose to the age. That’s why so many Ugandans found reason to support the Amin government. The presence of cameras at public events transformed mundane and forgettable occasions into moments in a chronicle of national struggle. Many people felt as if they were acting in the light of history.</p>
<h2>What the cameras didn’t capture</h2>
<p>While there’s a richness to the documentary nature of the photographs, there are very few that capture the harsh realities of daily life in Uganda in the 1970s, such as <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=9071306814">unaccountable violence</a>, a collapsing infrastructure and shortages of the most basic commodities.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/204000/afr590071978en.pdf">As many as 300,000 people died</a> at the hands of men serving Amin’s government. This violence – the torture and murder of dissidents, criminals and others who fell afoul of the state – largely took place out of public view, and there’s no trace of it the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation archive. </p>
<p>In 1979, the Amin regime was overthrown by a force of Ugandan exiles and Tanzanian troops. Since then, there have been scant opportunities for Ugandans to learn about Amin’s presidency. After a decades-long exile in Saudi Arabia, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/world/idi-amin-murderous-and-erratic-ruler-of-uganda-in-the-70-s-dies-in-exile.html">Amin died in 2003</a>. His remains are still buried there, awaiting repatriation to Uganda. </p>
<p>Debate around his legacy is only now finding a place in Uganda’s public life. So the thousands of recently discovered negatives – which were digitized as part of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi-r7t1DuSc">preservation project</a> organized by the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation, the University of Michigan and the University of Western Australia – are significant historical documents. </p>
<p>But when designing the Uganda Museum exhibition, we agonized over the absence of images that reveal suffering and death as facts of life in the 1970s. So we made an effort to present the photos in a way that acknowledges their status as instruments of Amin’s political self-interest. </p>
<p>In one part of the exhibition, we juxtaposed photos of the momentous events of public life with portraits of deceased people. In another part of the show, we highlighted particular episodes – the expulsion of the Asian community, the Economic Crimes Tribunal, the crackdown on smuggling – during which innocent people became victims of the regime. At the end of the exhibition, we put on display images of government torture chambers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A panel discussion with former Amin cabinet ministers Henry Kyemba and Edward Rugumayo at the Uganda Museum in May.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The exhibition <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YcZEzR_V7s">opened in mid-May this year</a> with a series of panels featuring people whose lives were intertwined with the Amin regime. The opening panel featured <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tNPJtcW-_Q">politicians who served in Amin’s cabinet</a>; on another night, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCx5ogXOQaI">journalists who covered his government</a> discussed their work; on a third evening, we heard from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLbNCTIgMwM">people who had lost loved ones in the hands of his thugs</a>. </p>
<p>We had intended to convene a fourth panel where Idi Amin’s family members would discuss their memories of their father. But 15 minutes before we were to go on the air, they announced that they would no longer participate. They thought the exhibition didn’t adequately acknowledge their father’s achievements. </p>
<p>Their reluctance to speak highlights the tensions that undergird public discussion around the Amin regime today. </p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119131/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek R. Peterson has received funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Vokes has received funding from the Australian Research Council, The European Union, The British Institute in Eastern Africa and the Australia-Africa Universities Network.</span></em></p>Hidden for decades in a vault at the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation, the photographs depict a regime fixated on establishing order, meting out punishment and stoking nationalism.Derek R. Peterson, Professor of History and African Studies, University of MichiganRichard Vokes, Associate Professor of Anthroplogy, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1129492019-04-16T01:56:39Z2019-04-16T01:56:39ZMukurtu: an online dilly bag for keeping Indigenous digital archives safe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263342/original/file-20190312-86710-1fr7hwk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2380%2C1161&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mukurtu is a Warumungu word meaning “dilly bag” or a safe keeping place for sacred materials. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nina Maile Gordon/The Conversation CC-NY-BD</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Reader advice: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article may contain images of people who have died.</em></p>
<p>A few years ago, the State Library of NSW was working with Moree’s <a href="https://www.moreetourism.com.au/things-to-do/educational-centres.html">Dhiiyaan Centre</a> to pull together archival photographs of the 1965 Freedom Rides, an Aboriginal-led protest against racist segregationist policies in NSW.</p>
<p>Moree – where <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/places/national/moree-baths">Aboriginal people were once banned from swimming in the public pool</a> – was an important site in the history of protest against official segregation in Australia, and a key stop on the Freedom Rides route.</p>
<p>Kirsten Thorpe - a Worimi woman, professional archivist and now a researcher at UTS – was then at the State Library, working with Mitchell Librarian Richard Neville to dig out old protest photos to share with the Moree community in the lead up to an exhibition. </p>
<p>But in practice, collecting, sharing and storing such digital archives in perpetuity is no simple matter. </p>
<p>How to ensure the material is stored safely, so the whole process doesn’t need to be repeated in a few years time? How to capture the outpouring of memories and stories that such an exhibition evokes? What if the exhibition inspires more people to come forward with important historical material or accounts – where does <em>that</em> material end up? And how to ensure Indigenous people are empowered to tell their own stories and have a say over how digital archives are managed?</p>
<p>Enter <a href="http://mukurtu.org/">Mukurtu</a>.</p>
<p>Mukurtu (pronounced MOOK-oo-too) is an online system that aims to help Indigenous communities conserve stories, videos, photographs, songs, word lists and other digital archives.</p>
<p>Mukurtu is a Warumungu word meaning “dilly bag” or a safe keeping place for sacred materials. </p>
<p>It’s a free, mobile, and open source platform built with Indigenous communities in mind to manage and share digital cultural heritage. Kirsten Thorpe says it’s the kind of thing that would have been really useful back when she was collating Freedom Rides material for the Moree community.</p>
<h2>Conserving Indigenous archives for future generations</h2>
<p>Mukurtu is/are already being used by <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-passamaquoddy-reclaim-their-culture-through-digital-repatriation">Native American communities</a> to store and preserve digital archives, and Kirsten Thorpe – now a senior researcher at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at UTS – is involved in making Mukurtu more widely accessible in Australia.</p>
<p>She works with other key players, such as Professor <a href="https://english.wsu.edu/kimberly-christen/">Kimberly Christen</a> at the Centre for Digital Curation and Scholarship in the US and <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/about-library/library-executive">Richard Neville</a> at the State Library of NSW, to ensure the Mukurtu Project has the institutional support it needs to help Indigenous communities protect their cultural heritage for generations to come.</p>
<p>On today’s episode of the podcast, Kirsten Thorpe and Richard Neville explain why Mukurtu is needed, how it’s being used and what’s at stake if we don’t find better ways to empower Indigenous people with the skills and tech to conserve and manage digital archives.</p>
<h2>New to podcasts?</h2>
<p>Podcasts are often best enjoyed using a podcast app. All iPhones come with the Apple Podcasts app already installed, or you may want to listen and subscribe on another app such as Pocket Casts (click <a href="https://pca.st/VTv7">here</a> to listen to Trust Me, I’m An Expert on Pocket Casts).</p>
<p>You can also hear us on Stitcher, Spotify or any of the apps below. Just pick a service from one of those listed below and click on the icon to find Trust Me, I’m An Expert.</p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/trust-me-im-an-expert/id1290047736?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D8"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjb252ZXJzYXRpb24uY29tL2F1L3BvZGNhc3RzL3RydXN0LW1lLXBvZGNhc3QucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-conversation/trust-me-im-an-expert"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="300" height="88"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/News--Politics-Podcasts/Trust-Me-Im-An-Expert-p1035757/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://radiopublic.com/trust-me-im-an-expert-Wa3E5A"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/7myc7drbLJVaRitAMXLB7V"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237984/original/file-20180925-149976-1ks72uy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" width="268" height="82"></a> </p>
<hr>
<h2>Additional audio</h2>
<p>Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from <a href="https://www.elefanttraks.com/">Elefant Traks</a></p>
<p>ABC News 1965 intro <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qJstzCNgHE">music</a>.</p>
<p>Lee Rosevere, <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Music_For_Podcasts_5/Lee_Rosevere_-_Music_For_Podcasts_5_-_08_Betrayal">Betrayal</a>.</p>
<h2>Lead image:</h2>
<p>Nina Maile Gordon</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112949/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Mukurtu - Warumungu word meaning 'dilly bag' or a safe keeping place for sacred materials - is an online system helping Indigenous people conserve photos, songs and other digital archives.Sunanda Creagh, Senior EditorNina Maile Gordon, Illustration Intern, Graphic DesignerLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1135422019-03-14T04:11:21Z2019-03-14T04:11:21ZThe Australian Web Archive is a momentous achievement – but things will get harder from here<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263786/original/file-20190314-123551-131c661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The National Library of Australia recently launched the Australian Web Archive - a historical record of Australian web content.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/">National Library of Australia</a> has just launched its <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/website?q=">Australian Web Archive</a> – a massive, freely accessible collection of content that provides a historical record of the development of world wide web content in Australia over more than two decades.</p>
<p>The new archive is a momentous achievement. Containing annual captures of all accessible pages on .au domains and dating back to 1996, it dwarfs even the the Library’s own <a href="https://pandora.nla.gov.au/%5D">PANDORA Web archive</a> – a curated collection of Australian web content deemed to be of national significance by the librarians.</p>
<p>That the Library has managed to <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/trove/2019/03/12/preserving-australias-web-history">construct this national web archive</a>, and to conduct annual captures of the .au domain since 2005, is all the more remarkable given the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-11/senators-urge-federal-government-to-fund-institutions/7160370">chronic underfunding</a> of its activities by successive federal governments. But with the increased use of social media and apps, the next step is to archive platforms such as Facebook and Twitter – unfortunately, this will be an even bigger challenge.</p>
<h2>Why archive the web?</h2>
<p>More and more material of cultural, social, political, and ultimately historical significance originates online. This has created significant problems for national libraries and archives used to dealing with books, newspapers, letters, and other hard copy materials. Because of constant changes in formats and systems, digital materials are perhaps even more difficult to preserve and keep accessible than
print or photos.</p>
<p>Imagine the digital heritage we would lose if such content was not being archived, though. The web is a communally authored space that contains everything from official government announcements through mainstream news reporting to personal homepages. It provides a record of cultural activity and public debate that is far more comprehensive than the written materials that survive from earlier periods in human history.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/protecting-our-digital-heritage-in-the-age-of-cyber-threats-108252">Protecting our digital heritage in the age of cyber threats</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Already, much of the early web has been lost, however. This is also because of the constant turnover in popular platforms. Early community sites such as GeoCities and MySpace have all but disappeared, and so has the content hosted on them – even in spite of <a href="https://www.wired.com/2010/11/geocities-lives-on-as-massive-torrent-download/">user efforts</a> to preserve at least some of the material from deletion.</p>
<p>The Australian Web Archive is a critical initiative to save what can still be saved, with a strong focus on Australian content. For future historians, it is a treasure trove: how did the general public respond to events of national significance, from John Howard’s election loss through Cyclone Yasi to
cricket’s ball-tampering scandal? How did our views, attitudes, and beliefs change in more subtle and gradual ways over time, in relation to everything from anthropogenic climate change to My Kitchen Rules?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ICYbKF8rTDo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">How to search the new Australian Web Archive.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The real problems are only just beginning</h2>
<p>In spite of its achievements, the Library can’t rest on its laurels. Because of the malleability of digital data, online content is also more changeable than print. Websites can change every day, every hour, every minute, and keeping track of such fast-paced content is only getting more difficult.</p>
<p>A crucial problem here is the increasing “platformisation” of the Internet. We no longer simply use “the web”: we’re on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, and any number of other platforms, and we’re more likely to access them through <a href="http://www.bandt.com.au/technology/study-mobile-overtakes-desktop-australias-daily-digital-habits">mobile apps than desktop browsers</a>. </p>
<p>Such platforms and their content are themselves of immense historical significance: hyperactive Twitter is a first draft of the present where we are constantly commenting on breaking news stories; all-conquering Facebook and its profiles, pages, and groups are a near-comprehensive representation of our collective interests and obsessions; audiovisual Instagram provides a constant stream of photos and videos of contemporary life.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-first-draft-of-the-present-why-we-must-preserve-social-media-content-59087">A First Draft of the Present: Why We Must Preserve Social Media Content</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A comprehensive archive of their contents would provide the material for a generation of historians and media, communication, and cultural studies researchers – but the technical, ethical, and political obstacles are immense, and growing. </p>
<h2>Archiving the platformised internet</h2>
<p>First, the platforms themselves usually don’t provide comprehensive access to their content. But even where they have, archiving institutions have struggled to cope with the overwhelming volume and unfamiliar forms of this firehose of information – as the US Library of Congress found to its detriment when it accepted the “gift” of <a href="https://medium.com/dmrc-at-large/the-library-of-congress-twitter-archive-a-failure-of-historic-proportions-6dc1c3bc9e2c">full and continuing access to Twitter</a>.</p>
<p>Second, users of these platforms have not usually provided explicit permission for their content to be archived and made available by national institutions, except in click-through agreements that none of them have actually read. National libraries have substantial experience in handling sensitive content, and are perhaps better placed than most other institutions to develop ethically sound access mechanisms, but few have chosen to tackle this thorny issue so far.</p>
<p>Finally, the growing backlash against social media platforms’ commodification of user data in the wake of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election">Cambridge Analytica</a> scandal has led many platform providers to take an increasingly defensive stance, and reduce data access even for legitimate purposes, including research.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/academics-call-on-facebook-to-make-data-more-widely-available-for-research-95365">Academics call on Facebook to make data more widely available for research</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Facebook’s just-announced “<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-zuckerberg-privacy-pivot/">pivot</a>” towards an emphasis on private over public communication must be seen in this context. It is less a genuine attempt to protect users from unwanted intrusions than an intervention designed to reduce pressure from regulators and policy-makers. Facebook’s core business model remains commercialising its users’ data, after all.</p>
<p>In combination, such developments present critical new challenges for the National Library of Australia and other institutions charged with documenting our continuing national narrative. </p>
<p>The Australian Web Archive is a remarkable achievement, and a powerful indicator of the world-leading expertise the Library has managed to assemble in-house. What is needed now is the political will and budget support to enable the Library to maintain this initiative, and to extend it to the new spaces where that narrative now continues to be told.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113542/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Axel Bruns partnered with the National Library in the Australian Research Council grant TrISMA: Tracking Infrastructure for Social Media Analysis (2014-16).</span></em></p>The National Library of Australia’s web archive preserves online Australian content dating back to 1996. The next step is to archive platforms such as Facebook and Twitter - but it won’t be easy.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1082502019-01-23T11:47:04Z2019-01-23T11:47:04ZInside the Kingdom of Haiti, ‘the Wakanda of the Western Hemisphere’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254568/original/file-20190118-100264-1ee8g4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An 1811 wood engraving depicts the coronation of King Henry.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/henri-christophe-1767-1820-granger.jpg">Fine Art America</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a historian of Haitian literature and culture, I was excited to learn that Haiti plays a central role in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9114286/">Black Panther: Wakanda Forever</a>.” There are two lengthy scenes that take place in the Caribbean nation and feature original footage shot in the country. </p>
<p>It’s a fitting gesture: The fictional kingdom of Wakanda has a real-life corollary in the historic Kingdom of Hayti, which existed as a sort of Wakanda of the Western Hemisphere from 1811 to 1820. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-haiti-should-be-at-the-centre-of-the-age-of-revolution">Haitian Revolution</a> led to the creation of the first free Black state in the Americas. But the world was hardly expecting a former enslaved man named Henry Christophe to make himself the king of it. </p>
<p>Media accounts from the era, some of which I’ve collected <a href="https://lagazetteroyale.com/">in a digital archive</a>, serve as a window into a brief period of time when the kingdom stood as a beacon of Black freedom in a world of slavery. Yet, <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/wakanda-utopia-impossible-blame-human-nature/">like Wakanda</a>, the Kingdom of Hayti wasn’t a utopia for everyone.</p>
<h2>A new kind of kingdom</h2>
<p>On Jan. 1, 1804, <a href="https://thenib.com/haitian-revolution">an army led by former enslaved Africans</a> in the French colony of Saint-Domingue staved off France’s attempt to bring back slavery, and declared themselves independent and free forever.</p>
<p>The leader of the revolutionaries, <a href="http://theconversation.com/meet-haitis-founding-father-whose-black-revolution-was-too-radical-for-thomas-jefferson-101963">General Jean-Jacques Dessalines</a>, had defeated Napoleon’s famous army and made himself emperor of the newly-renamed Haiti.</p>
<p>But in October 1806, Dessalines was assassinated by political rivals, leading the country to be divided into two separate states: General Henry Christophe named himself president of the northern part of Haiti, while General Alexandre Pétion governed a completely separate republic in the southern and southwestern part of the country. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254549/original/file-20190118-100267-gmvmfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254549/original/file-20190118-100267-gmvmfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=697&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254549/original/file-20190118-100267-gmvmfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=697&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254549/original/file-20190118-100267-gmvmfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=697&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254549/original/file-20190118-100267-gmvmfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254549/original/file-20190118-100267-gmvmfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254549/original/file-20190118-100267-gmvmfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘I am reborn from my ashes’ was the motto of Henry I, the former slave who became king.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Henry_I%2C_King_of_Haiti.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In March 1811, President Henry Christophe surprised everyone when he anointed himself King Henry I and renamed the northern republic, the Kingdom of Hayti. Henry I soon had a full court of nobles that included dukes, barons, counts and knights to rival that of royal England.</p>
<p>Haiti’s first and only kingdom immediately attracted the attention of media outlets from around the world. How could there be a republic on one side of the island and a monarchy on the other, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=T-JGAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=niles+weekly+register+First+monarch+crowned+CHristophe&source=bl&ots=eglFJd3oHe&sig=ACfU3U1zIocAEbAb0c1d-w7h3AelrQBTnQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiWwqG56_nfAhXGo1kKHcioAv8Q6AEwBnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false">they wondered</a>? Was the new Black king trying to mimic the same white sovereigns who had once enslaved his people, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=aFg8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA168&lpg=PA168&dq=%22%E2%80%9Cbaroness+Big+Bottom%22&source=bl&ots=jGxRhH0IOC&sig=ACfU3U2-gi0d0npsToYiaCrkgf-yYuVc0w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwit-5GSqvzfAhUFr1kKHedwAG0Q6AEwDHoECAAQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false">others asked</a>? </p>
<p>The edicts establishing the royal order of Haiti were immediately <a href="http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00008972/00001/2j">translated into English</a> and printed in Philadelphia, while many American and British newspapers and magazines ran celebrity profiles of the Haitian king. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=aFg8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=%22elegant+model+of+an+hercules%22&source=bl&ots=jGxRdF3MSE&sig=l8AgTxQ21Hp4MlLNUIZPwC1KG6k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjm2N-rmvDfAhWIjFkKHV7kCckQ6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22elegant%20model%20of%20an%20hercules%22&f=false">One newspaper</a> described him as “the elegant model of an Hercules.” <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/96049911/">Another described him</a> as “a remarkably handsome, well-built man; with a broad chest, square shoulders, and an appearance of great muscular strength and activity.”</p>
<h2>The ‘First Monarch’ of the ‘New World’</h2>
<p>In 1813, construction of the opulent <a href="https://toussaintlouverturefoundation-or.doodlekit.com/home/palais-sans-souci">Sans-Souci Palace</a> – meaning literally “without worry” – was completed. </p>
<p>The palace was partially destroyed by an earthquake in 1842; today, its remains have been designated a <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/180">world heritage UNESCO site</a>.</p>
<p>During its heyday, the palace dazzled.</p>
<p>There were the elegantly manicured gardens and a unique, <a href="http://www.esclavage-memoire.com/lieux-de-memoire/palais-de-sans-souci-citadelle-laferriere-parc-national-historique-29.html">domed cathedral</a>. The structure was flanked by a dramatic <a href="http://www.haititourisme.gouv.ht/pages/1/11-histoire.php#prettyPhoto%5B1%5D/0/">double staircase</a> leading to the entryway and two arches detailed with etchings and inscriptions. One acknowledged Henry, rather than Jean-Jacques, as the country’s “founder.”</p>
<p>There were also <a href="http://lagazetteroyale.com/1815/07/19-juin-1815/">two painted crowns</a> on the principal palace façade, each of which stood at 16 feet tall. The one on the right read “To the First Monarch Crowned in the New World.” The one on the left said “The Beloved Queen Reigns Forever Over Our Hearts.” </p>
<p>King Henry lived in the palace with his wife, <a href="http://thepublicarchive.com/?p=3608">Queen Marie-Louise</a>, and his <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/797840890211726795/">three children</a>, Prince Victor Henry, and the princesses, Améthyste and Athénaire. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254622/original/file-20190120-100285-1imffb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254622/original/file-20190120-100285-1imffb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254622/original/file-20190120-100285-1imffb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254622/original/file-20190120-100285-1imffb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254622/original/file-20190120-100285-1imffb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254622/original/file-20190120-100285-1imffb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254622/original/file-20190120-100285-1imffb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An April 1815 issue of The Gazette Royale details how the Kingdom of Hayti foiled France’s attempt to reconquer its former colony.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Newspapers around the world reprinted articles from the monarchy’s official newspaper, the <a href="https://lagazetteroyale.com/about/">Gazette Royale d’Hayti</a>, detailing the royal family’s lavish dinners, replete with <a href="http://lagazetteroyale.com/1816/08/22-aout-1816/">bombastic speeches</a> and lengthy toasts to famous contemporary figures such as King George III of England, U.S. President James Madison, the King of Prussia, and the “friend of humanity,” the “immortal” British abolitionist <a href="http://abolition.e2bn.org/box.html">Thomas Clarkson</a>. </p>
<p>The Gazette <a href="http://lagazetteroyale.com/1816/08/26-aout-1816/">also recounted</a> the decadence of Queen Marie-Louise’s August 1816 official birthday celebration, which lasted for 12 days and had 1,500 people in attendance. On the final day of the party, 12 cannons fired after the Duke of Anse toasted the queen as “the perfect model of mothers and wives.” </p>
<h2>A free island in a sea of slavery</h2>
<p>There was much more to King Henry’s reign than luxurious parties. </p>
<p>On March 28, 1811, King Henry installed a constitutional monarchy, a move lauded by many in the British elite. The famous British naturalist Joseph Banks championed Henry’s 1812 book of laws, titled the “Code Henry,” <a href="https://archive.org/details/ASPC0001978900/page/n15">calling it</a> “the most moral association of men in existence.”</p>
<p>“Nothing that white men have been able to arrange is equal to it,” he added. </p>
<p>Banks admired the code’s detailed reorganization of the economy, from one based on slave labor to one – at least in theory – based on <a href="http://www.paulclammer.com/2015/henry-christophe/">free labor</a>. This transformation was wholly fitting for the formerly enslaved man-turned-king, whose motto was “<a href="http://thepublicarchive.com/?p=3595">I am reborn from my ashes</a>.”</p>
<p>The code provided for shared compensation between proprietors and laborers at “a full fourth the gross product, free from all duties,” and it also contained provisions for <a href="http://lagazetteroyale.com/1818/01/25-janvier-1818/">the redistribution of any land</a> that had previously belonged to slave owners.</p>
<p>“Your Majesty, in his paternal solicitude,” one edict reads, “wants for every Haytian, indiscriminately, the poor as well as the rich, to have the ability to become the owner of the lands of our former oppressors.”</p>
<p>Henry’s stated “paternal solicitude” even extended to enslaved Africans. While the <a href="http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/1807-const.htm">Constitution of 1807</a> had announced that Haiti would not “disturb the regimes” of the colonial powers, royal Haitian guards regularly intervened in the slave trade to free captives on foreign ships that entered Haitian waters. An <a href="http://lagazetteroyale.com/1817/10/10-octobre-1817/">October 1817 issue</a> of the Gazette celebrated the Haitian military’s capture of a slave ship and subsequent release of 145 of “our unfortunate brothers, victims of greed and the odious traffic in human flesh.”</p>
<h2>Too good to be true?</h2>
<p>Yet life in the Kingdom of Hayti was far from perfect.</p>
<p>Henry’s <a href="https://ageofrevolutions.com/2018/04/16/beyond-race-civil-war-regionalism-and-ideology-in-early-post-independence-haiti/">political rivals</a> noted that people frequently defected to the southern Republic of Haiti, where they told stories of the monarch’s favoritism and the aristocracy’s abuse of power.</p>
<p>Worse, Henry’s famous fortress, the <a href="http://www.citadellelaferriere.com/Citadelle-Laferriere-History.html">Citadelle Laferrière</a>, was, according to some accounts, <a href="http://lagazetteroyale.com/1818/03/31-mars-1818/">built with forced labor</a>. For this reason, Haitians have <a href="https://repository.duke.edu/dc/radiohaiti/RL10059-RR-0663_01">long debated</a> whether the imposing structure, which was restored in 1990, ought to symbolize the liberty of post-independence Haiti.</p>
<p>Henry’s dreams of a free Black kingdom would not outlive him. On Aug. 15, 1820, the king <a href="http://lagazetteroyale.com/acknowledgements/">suffered a debilitating stroke</a>. Physically impaired – and fearing a fracturing administration plagued by the desertion of some its most prominent members – Haiti’s first and only king killed himself on the night of Oct. 8, 1820. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255026/original/file-20190122-100288-unqitw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255026/original/file-20190122-100288-unqitw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255026/original/file-20190122-100288-unqitw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255026/original/file-20190122-100288-unqitw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255026/original/file-20190122-100288-unqitw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255026/original/file-20190122-100288-unqitw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255026/original/file-20190122-100288-unqitw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255026/original/file-20190122-100288-unqitw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustrator Mahlon Blaine depicts King Henry on the cover of the 1928 book ‘Black Majesty.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://twitter.com/paulclammer/status/463688990072115200/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconversation.com%2Fdrafts%2F108250%2Fedit">@paulclammer/Twitter</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite some questions about living conditions in the Kingdom of Hayti, its ruler can still be recognized as a visionary. Even one of his most ardent rivals from the south, Charles Hérard Dumesle, who often referred to Christophe as a “despot,” nonetheless praised the remarkable “new social order” outlined in the Code Henry. Dumesle <a href="http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll58/id/42979">appeared to lament</a> that the king’s “civil laws were the formula for a social code that existed only on paper.”</p>
<p>For all those who still dream of <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/interview-keeanga-yamahtta-taylor/">Black liberation</a>, strong – if <a href="http://www.warscapes.com/reviews/black-panther-representation-without-taxation">ultimately flawed</a> – leaders, like both the King of Hayti and Black Panther, have always been central to these visions.</p>
<p>King Henry was even depicted as a sort of superhero in his time. As one article from 1816 <a href="http://lagazetteroyale.com/1816/08/26-aout-1816/">noted</a> of Henry,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“History demonstrates that no people has ever done anything great entirely by themselves; it is only ever in collaboration with the great men who become elevated in their midst that they raise themselves up to the glory of accomplishing extraordinary deeds.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on January 23, 2019.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108250/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marlene Daut does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 1811 a former slave named Henry Christophe anointed himself ‘First Monarch’ of the ‘New World.’ For 10 years, he ruled over a part of modern-day Haiti, becoming a global media sensation.Marlene Daut, Professor of French and African American Studies, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1082522018-12-05T18:56:14Z2018-12-05T18:56:14ZProtecting our digital heritage in the age of cyber threats<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248921/original/file-20181205-100859-1gs8rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There is no clear cybersecurity governance framework geared towards detecting and preventing attacks against digital identity assets.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>One of the key functions of the government is to collect and archive national records. This includes everything from property records and registers of births, deaths and taxes, to Parliamentary proceedings, and even the ABC’s digital library of Australian news and entertainment.</p>
<p>A new <a href="https://www.aspi.org.au/report/identity-nation">report released today</a> from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) considers the important role these records play as the collective digital identity of our nation. </p>
<p>The report’s author, Anne Lyons, explains how an attack on these records could disrupt the day-to-day functioning of society, and why we need to do more to protect them.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hooray-were-digital-natives-so-who-preserves-our-culture-9693">Hooray, we're digital natives – so who preserves our culture?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Why are these records important?</h2>
<p>Given that we live in the digital era, our digital identity records have been transformed into electronic data and are stored virtually in cloud servers. These servers act as the memory centre of the nation, preserving Australia’s unaltered history. </p>
<p>We can trust these records are accurate, confidential and not interfered with. All this digital information may be referred to as “digital identity assets”. </p>
<p>These assets are worth protecting, because they are important for the functioning of government, and are a legacy for future generations. Collectively, they embody who and what Australia is as a nation, its journey, and its time and place in history. </p>
<h2>What could happen if they were hacked?</h2>
<p>The impact of any theft, manipulation, destruction or deletion of digital identity assets could be catastrophic. </p>
<p>The courts would not be able to function without the relevant digital records. Manipulated property title deeds could create legal challenges. Passports and visas may not be able to be verified and issued. And historic records could be tampered with or forged. </p>
<p>In the worst-case scenario, such an attack could interfere with the proper functioning of government, and shatter public trust and confidence in government institutions. </p>
<p>Lyons paints a picture of what it would look like if property records were hacked:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You wake up in 2022 to discover that the Australian financial system’s in crisis. Digital land titles have been altered, and it’s impossible for people and companies to prove ownership of their assets. The stock market moves into freefall as confidence in the financial sector evaporates when the essential underpinning of Australia’s multitrillion-dollar housing market – ownership – is thrown into question. There’s a rush to try to prove ownership, but nowhere to turn. Banks cease all property lending and business lending that has property as collateral. The real estate market, insurance market and ancillary industries come to a halt. The economy begins to lurch.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/preservationists-race-to-capture-cultural-monuments-with-3d-images-53536">Preservationists race to capture cultural monuments with 3D images</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What are we doing to prevent attacks?</h2>
<p>Three pieces of legislation have been passed since 2017 to protect the nation against crimes committed over the internet targeting telecommunications, water, electricity and gas equipment. These are the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2018A00029">Security of Critical Infrastructure Act</a>, the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2018A00067">National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Act</a> and the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2018C00385">Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Act</a>.</p>
<p>But cyber attacks are not only targeted at our nation’s critical infrastructure. Servers that host digital identity assets are also at risk. Nation states and individual hackers could gain access to databases using our email communications to gain access.</p>
<p>Despite this risk, our lawmakers have failed to exert the same vigour in crafting laws that protect digital identity assets as they have exerted in efforts to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-04/encryption-whatsapp-signal-messages-explained/10580208">decrypt the WhatsApp messages of criminal targets</a>. </p>
<p>There is no clear and specific cybersecurity governance framework in the law books geared towards detecting and preventing attacks against these assets. </p>
<h2>How to protect our digital heritage</h2>
<h3>1. Assess cyber vulnerabilities alongside social ones</h3>
<p>Governments need to improve their holistic situational awareness to counter threats. That means assessing cyber vulnerabilities in conjunction with societal ones.</p>
<p>Online disinformation campaigns and malicious cyber activities are all referred to as hybrid threats. Hybrid threats – which could make use of digital identity assets – are challenging to detect and to make sense of due to their dynamic nature. Understanding the complex nature of a hybrid threat is referred to as cyber situational awareness.</p>
<p>Outside of the cyber environment, situational awareness may refer to an awareness of cultural, ethnic and religious tensions in society that could be vulnerable to online exploitation. For example, in the 1980s the Soviet government <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-meddling-disinformation-fake-news-elections.html">used the HIV epidemic to sow social division in the United States</a>. Under operation INFEKTION, Russia spread stories that the American government created the virus and spread it among its population.</p>
<p>In cases like this, it’s feasible that digital health records could be hacked and altered to serve as fake evidence. In this way, societal vulnerabilities can become one part of a mixed bag of threats. </p>
<p>Our ability to effectively resist and recover from malicious hybrid activities depends on our capacity to detect, analyse and understand the nature of the threat, in near real time. Metadata can be used for this purpose to show who accessed a server and from what location.</p>
<p>To improve cyber situational awareness, access logs should be retained and the computer emergency response team must collect metadata from government departments themselves, and analyse the data in near real time. This is a growing trend in the cybersecurity sector and public bodies must gear up.</p>
<h3>2. Store copies of historical records offline</h3>
<p>We also need to simulate how digital identity assets can be used against us and be prepared to counter the propaganda. Schools and universities can store multiple offline historic records, which can be used to verify accuracy when conflicting stories arise. Using National Archives as a central repository for digital identity assets is a single point of failure. Redundancy work-arounds must be created. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-internet-is-reshaping-world-heritage-and-our-experience-of-it-92682">How the internet is reshaping World Heritage and our experience of it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h3>3. Engage the private sector</h3>
<p>This is a job too big and too important to be left to government alone. Historical societies and charitable organisations may need to store hard and soft copies of the same records all over the country. Relevant laws must mandate, cybersecurity situational awareness for telecommunications companies, ISPs, computer emergency response teams, law enforcement and security agencies, but in clear and responsible fashion. </p>
<p>We must take a proactive approach that mandates the roll out of appropriate advance counter measures. A legal mandate that is largely based on past incidents may not be an effective strategy to prevent dynamic hybrid threats. This is how we will tell hackers to back off our national heritage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108252/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stanley Shanapinda does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Digital identity assets, such as property records and Parliamentary proceedings, embody who and what Australia is as a nation. We need to do more to protect them.Stanley Shanapinda, Research Fellow, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1036392018-12-04T11:32:44Z2018-12-04T11:32:44ZI dig through archives to unearth hidden stories from African-American history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247532/original/file-20181127-76746-1yiewo2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Team member Felix Knight looks through archives at the Church of Espiritu Santo in Havana, Cuba.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David LaFevor</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many years ago, as a graduate student searching in the archives of Spanish Florida, I discovered the first “underground railroad” of enslaved Africans escaping from Protestant Carolina to find religious sanctuary in Catholic Florida. In 1738, these runaways formed <a href="https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/histarch/mose.htm">Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose</a>, the first free black settlement in what became the U.S. </p>
<p>The excitement of that discovery encouraged me to keep digging. After doing additional research in Spain, I followed the trail of the Mose villagers to Cuba, where they had emigrated when Great Britain acquired Florida. I found many of them in 18th-century church records in Havana, Matanzas, Regla, Guanabacoa and San Miguel del Padrón.</p>
<p>Today, those records and others live on in the <a href="https://slavesocieties.org/">Slave Societies Digital Archive</a>. This archive, which I launched in 2003, now holds approximately 600,000 images dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Since its creation, the archive has led to new insights into African populations in the Americas.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248013/original/file-20181129-170244-nnh0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248013/original/file-20181129-170244-nnh0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248013/original/file-20181129-170244-nnh0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248013/original/file-20181129-170244-nnh0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248013/original/file-20181129-170244-nnh0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248013/original/file-20181129-170244-nnh0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248013/original/file-20181129-170244-nnh0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248013/original/file-20181129-170244-nnh0l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An archivist works with a document from Paraiba, Brazil.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Lafevor</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What we’ve found</h2>
<p>The Slave Societies Digital Archive documents the lives of approximately 6 million free and enslaved Africans, their descendants, and the indigenous, European and Asian people with whom they interacted. </p>
<p>When searching for and preserving archives, our researchers must race against time. These fast-vanishing records are threatened daily by tropical humidity, hurricanes, political instability and neglect. </p>
<p>The work is usually challenging and sometimes risky. Our equipment has been stolen in several locations. Soon after we left the remote community of Quibdó, Colombia, a gun battle erupted in the surrounding jungles between the government military forces and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, better known as FARC. It’s no wonder that one of our team members called what we do “guerrilla preservation.”</p>
<p>This hard work has allowed us to discover more about the lives of slaves in the Americas. For example, the Catholic Church mandated the baptism of enslaved Africans in the 15th century. The baptismal records now preserved in the Slave Societies Digital Archive are the oldest and most uniform serial data available for African-American history. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248010/original/file-20181129-170238-1cz6000.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248010/original/file-20181129-170238-1cz6000.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248010/original/file-20181129-170238-1cz6000.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248010/original/file-20181129-170238-1cz6000.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248010/original/file-20181129-170238-1cz6000.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248010/original/file-20181129-170238-1cz6000.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248010/original/file-20181129-170238-1cz6000.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248010/original/file-20181129-170238-1cz6000.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover sheet of Baptisms for St. Augustine, dating from 1716.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Societies Digital Archive</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These unique documents also offer detailed information regarding the diverse ethnic origins of Africans in the Atlantic world. Once baptized, Africans and their descendants were eligible for the sacraments of Christian marriage and burial, adding to their historical record. Through membership in the Catholic Church, families also generated a host of other religious documentation, such as confirmations, petitions to wed, wills and even annulments. </p>
<p>In addition, Africans and their descendants joined church brotherhoods organized along ethnic lines. These groups recorded not only ceremonial and religious aspects of their members’ lives, but also their social, political and economic networks. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247534/original/file-20181127-76740-1ta58nz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247534/original/file-20181127-76740-1ta58nz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247534/original/file-20181127-76740-1ta58nz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247534/original/file-20181127-76740-1ta58nz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247534/original/file-20181127-76740-1ta58nz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247534/original/file-20181127-76740-1ta58nz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247534/original/file-20181127-76740-1ta58nz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247534/original/file-20181127-76740-1ta58nz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A page of burials of unbaptized ‘Asiaticos’ from the Cathedral of San Carlos de Borromeo in Matanzas, Cuba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Societies Digital Archive</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Previously unknown church records for Havana’s black Brotherhood of St. Joseph the Carpenter document the membership of Jose Antonio Aponte, executed by Spanish officials in 1812 for leading an alleged slave conspiracy. Our records similarly document the marriage and death of another famed “conspirator” – the mulatto poet <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2015.1067400">Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdes, better known as Placido</a>. </p>
<p>Africans and their descendants also left a documentary trail in municipal and provincial archives, including petitions, property registries and disputes, bills of sale, dowries and letters from owners granting slaves their freedom.</p>
<h2>Sharing our discoveries</h2>
<p>My work in the rich records in Florida, Spain and Cuba taught me how to track early African history elsewhere. Additional grants have allowed our archival teams to expand to new sites in Brazil, Cuba and Colombia and, finally, to digitize the church records for Spanish Florida. </p>
<p>Thanks to those records, and the excavations of <a href="https://www.flagler.edu/information-for/community-members/research-institute/research-associates/kathleen-deagan/">archaeologist Kathleen Deagan</a>, Mose, the settlement that I first studied as a graduate student, is today a National Historical Landmark. It boasts a new museum where the <a href="https://fortmose.org/">Fort Mose Historical Society</a> organizes historical reenactments and community events.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248011/original/file-20181129-170253-i98bcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248011/original/file-20181129-170253-i98bcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248011/original/file-20181129-170253-i98bcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248011/original/file-20181129-170253-i98bcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248011/original/file-20181129-170253-i98bcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248011/original/file-20181129-170253-i98bcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248011/original/file-20181129-170253-i98bcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248011/original/file-20181129-170253-i98bcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Documents are sometimes found in damaged condition – like these record shards from Matanzas, Cuba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Societies Digital Archive</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Each of the modern nations whose African history we are tracking still struggles with the legacy of slavery. Both scholars and the public who are interested in African heritage can look at these materials to help define national identities in multicultural societies. For example, the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/02/brazilian-supreme-court-ruling-protects-quilombola-land-rights-for-now/">granted land rights to self-identified quilombolas, or runaway slaves</a>. One group was able to find their ancestors in church records we preserved for the state of Rio de Janeiro.</p>
<p>Since the archive’s inception, we have worked to ensure that these precious materials are freely available to the interested public. Our teams also provide copies of all digitized records to our host churches and archives, as well as donate cameras and other necessary equipment to allow local teams to continue preserving their own endangered history.</p>
<p>Next, we hope to begin a new project in the Dominican Republic, Spain’s first colony in the New World and my childhood home. It boasts many of <a href="https://everything-everywhere.com/unesco-world-heritage-site-293-colonial-city-of-santo-domingo/">Europe’s “firsts” in the Western Hemisphere</a>. The capital of Santo Domingo is a UNESCO World Heritage Site where Spaniards established the first monastery, the first hospital, the first court of appeals, the first university, the first cathedral in the Americas – and a free black town that predates Mose, the site where all this work first started. </p>
<iframe src="https://albumizr.com/a/OnCq" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><em>Credit: Slave Societies Digital Archive, CC BY-SA</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103639/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Landers has received funding from The Black Caucus of the Florida Legislature, Latin American Materials Project, National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant, British Library Endangered Archives Programme, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Diocese of St. Augustine, the Historic St. Augustine Research Institute, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Vanderbilt University's Jane and Alexander Heard Library.</span></em></p>The Slave Societies Digital Archive documents the lives of approximately 6 million free and enslaved Africans in the Americas.Jane Landers, Professor of History, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1067472018-11-21T11:49:45Z2018-11-21T11:49:45ZIn the 1600s Hester Pulter wondered, ‘Why must I forever be confined?’ – now her poems are online for all to see<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246558/original/file-20181120-161627-mneb7m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">For centuries, Pulter's manuscript lay untouched at the University of Leeds' Brotherton Library.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/7610">University of Leeds Library, Brotherton Collection, MS Lt q 32</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1996, a graduate student named Mark Robson was creating a digital catalog of the University of Leeds’ Brotherton Library when he discovered a small manuscript on the shelf. The elegantly titled “Poems Breathed Forth by the Noble Hadassas” contained 120 poems and a half-finished prose romance. </p>
<p>As far as Robson could tell, the manuscript hadn’t been read in over 250 years. He hadn’t heard of the “Noble Hadassas” – nor had anyone he asked.</p>
<p>But a riddle scribbled in the manuscript offered a hint about her true name: “Marvel not my name’s concealed / In being hid it is revealed.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246551/original/file-20181120-161609-1brob0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246551/original/file-20181120-161609-1brob0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246551/original/file-20181120-161609-1brob0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246551/original/file-20181120-161609-1brob0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246551/original/file-20181120-161609-1brob0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246551/original/file-20181120-161609-1brob0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246551/original/file-20181120-161609-1brob0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246551/original/file-20181120-161609-1brob0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The clue written in the manuscript.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/7610">University of Leeds Library, Brotherton Collection, MS Lt q 32.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the Biblical story of Esther, “Hadassah” is Esther’s Jewish name. In early modern England, “Hester” and “Esther” were versions of the same name. They’re also anagrams. That allusion to “Esther” – in addition to a couple of references to an estate named Broadfield – gave scholars just enough evidence to search public records for possible authors. </p>
<p>The mystery manuscript turned out to be a collection of poems by a 17th-century English woman named Hester Pulter. </p>
<p>At first glance, the verses of a self-taught, unpublished poet might not seem remarkable. But Pulter was writing in an era of chaos and change in England. She was eager to explore some of the most exciting scientific ideas of the time. And in a time when women were expected to be silent and chaste, she took risks in her poetry and confidently expressed her ideas.</p>
<p>Now, a collaboration between literary scholars across the globe is bringing Hester Pulter’s poems to the public, in the form of an open-access digital edition called <a href="http://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/">The Pulter Project</a>, which launched on Nov. 15, 2018.</p>
<h2>Who was Hester Pulter?</h2>
<p>Pulter was born into the aristocratic Ley family in 1605 and married Arthur Pulter when she was relatively young. After marrying, she spent much of her life at the isolated Pulter estate, which was over a day’s journey from London. She wrote most of her poems at home and would occasionally travel to London to visit other family members. </p>
<p>Since Pulter mainly kept to herself and rarely left her home, <a href="http://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/about-hester-pulter-and-the-manuscript.html">most of what we know about Hester</a> comes from public records. She gave birth to 15 children, only two of which survived to adulthood, and lived through the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/English-Civil-Wars">English Civil War</a>, which lasted from 1642 to 1651.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246387/original/file-20181120-161627-nx08me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246387/original/file-20181120-161627-nx08me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246387/original/file-20181120-161627-nx08me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246387/original/file-20181120-161627-nx08me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246387/original/file-20181120-161627-nx08me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246387/original/file-20181120-161627-nx08me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1057&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246387/original/file-20181120-161627-nx08me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1057&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246387/original/file-20181120-161627-nx08me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1057&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The original manuscript of Hester Pulter’s ‘View But This Tulip.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Leeds Library, Brotherton Collection, MS Lt q 32</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Literary scholar Alice Eardley, who produced the <a href="https://crrs.ca/publications/ov32/">first scholarly edition of Pulter’s works</a> in 2014, has suggested that Pulter’s relative isolation inoculated her from pressure by readers or literary society to conform to a certain style or subject matter. It gave her the freedom to write innovative, opinionated, emotionally complex poetry.</p>
<p>Pulter’s poems, which range from the political to the autobiographical, appear to have been written throughout the 1640s and 1650s. In the 1660s, Hester worked with a scribe to create a presentation copy of her draft poems, making <a href="http://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ee/universal-dissolution/">notes and annotations</a> on the manuscript. </p>
<p>It’s likely she never intended to publish her poems, however. In 17th-century England, women who published risked being seen as vulgar and sexually suspect. In order to avoid slander, the few women who did publish usually wrote about topics more aligned with proper womanly values: <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A66847.0001.001">household guides</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Margaret_Hoby">devotional books and diaries</a> or memoirs of their husbands. </p>
<p>An aristocratic woman like Hester would have been expected to behave modestly, keep quiet and focus on her household rather than write about political conflicts and scientific experimentation. Pulter’s small family may have read her work, but it seems that her poems sat untouched after her death until they were rediscovered in 1996. </p>
<h2>Poetry that’s observant, personal and political</h2>
<p>Although Pulter lived a relatively isolated existence, her poems reveal a deep intellectual engagement with the most pressing issues and ideas of the mid-1600s. From the references she makes in her work, it’s clear that she had read works of natural history, alchemy and descriptions of America like William Wood’s “<a href="https://archive.org/details/woodsnewengland00woodgoog/page/n41">New England’s Prospect</a>.” </p>
<p>She also appears to have kept up with major scientific discoveries, including Galilean astronomy and the microscope. In “Universal Dissolution,” she acknowledges Galileo’s discoveries, describing the sun as the “front and center of all light,” the star around which all other “orbs perpetually do run.”</p>
<p>Pulter was also a keen observer of nature. In “<a href="http://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ee/the-pismire/">The Pismire</a>,” she describes watching an ant colony at work for an afternoon. “<a href="http://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ee/view-but-this-tulip-emblem-40/">View But This Tulip</a>” shows off her familiarity with alchemy and early experimental practices, and in it she begins to think about the human body as composed of recyclable atoms. These poems place her within a culture of experimental observation that was part of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/jardineih_01.shtml">rise of modern science</a>.</p>
<p>And she certainly didn’t shy away from expressing her political views. </p>
<p>Hester’s parents were <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/civil_war_revolution/choosingsides_01.shtml#one">Royalists</a> – supporters of Charles I – and she remained a Royalist even when many of her extended family and neighbors supported Parliament instead. Many of her poems express grief at the havoc the civil war caused in England, and mourn a breakdown of religious and social hierarchy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246559/original/file-20181120-161624-al393s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246559/original/file-20181120-161624-al393s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246559/original/file-20181120-161624-al393s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246559/original/file-20181120-161624-al393s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246559/original/file-20181120-161624-al393s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246559/original/file-20181120-161624-al393s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246559/original/file-20181120-161624-al393s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246559/original/file-20181120-161624-al393s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 17th-century oil painting depicts the execution of Charles I.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/The_Execution_of_Charles_I_of_England.jpg">Scottish National Gallery</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In “<a href="http://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ee/on-that-unparalleled-prince-charles-the-first-his-horrid-murder/">On that Unparalleled Prince Charles, His Horrid Murder</a>,” she compares a country without a king to the universe without a sun, both of which fall into chaos.</p>
<p>But her political poems avoid outright tribalism. Instead, they’re nuanced and well-informed, and they <a href="http://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ee/the-toad-and-the-spider-emblem-23/">critique the ruling class</a> for their role in social collapse.</p>
<p>Pulter is equally comfortable writing about personal experiences like her illnesses or a child’s death. She surveys the effects of time on her body in “<a href="http://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ee/made-when-i-was-sick-1647/">Made When I Was Sick, 1647</a>,” and in “<a href="http://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ee/upon-the-death-of-my-dear-and-lovely-daughter/">Upon the Death of My Dear and Lovely Daughter, Jane Pulter</a>,” deals with the grief of losing yet another child. It’s tinged with envy of parents with healthy children: </p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> All you that have indulgent parents been,
And have your children in perfection seen
Of youth and beauty: lend one tear to me,
And trust me, I will do as much for thee,
Unless my own grief do exhaust my store;
Then will I sigh till I suspire no more.
</code></pre>
<p>She also expresses early feminist ideas, and addresses, in complex ways, how society constricts women’s behavior, devalues their work and diminishes their intellectual value.</p>
<p>From “Why Must I Thus Forever Be Confined?”:</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> Why must I thus forever be confined
Against the noble freedom of my mind?
Whenas each hoary moth, and gaudy fly
Within their spheres enjoy their liberty.
</code></pre>
<h2>Reaching new readers</h2>
<p>Hester Pulter is clearly worth knowing. Her works speak to the major issues of 17th-century England and provide a rare lens on English culture.</p>
<p>In an effort to bring Pulter’s poems to the public, early modern literature professors <a href="https://www.english.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/wall-wendy.html">Wendy Wall</a> and <a href="https://brocku.ca/humanities/english-language-and-literature/faculty/leah-knight/">Leah Knight</a> created The Pulter Project. They collaborated with a host of other scholars from the U.S., Canada, Australia and England to create a free, digital edition of Pulter’s works. </p>
<p>The Pulter Project allows readers to toggle between scans of the manuscript, basic and annotated editions of poems, and explanatory notes. Readers can also explore “curations” for each poem, which are images and selections from texts relevant to the content of a given Pulter poem. </p>
<p>Editors draw on their expertise of 17th-century English culture to contextualize the poems and also make connections to modern culture. The <a href="http://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ee/made-when-i-was-not-well/#aging-women">curated materials</a> for “Made When I Was Not Well,” for example, discuss “invisible woman syndrome,” the social phenomenon of women disappearing from public view when they reach middle age, or are ridiculed and criticized for attracting public attention. </p>
<p>Curations for “<a href="http://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ee/my-love-is-fair/#whos-fair-race-and-praise-of-the-beloved">My Love is Fair</a>” explore racialized beauty standards, topics just as relevant for 17th-century readers as they are for today’s intersectional feminists.</p>
<p>The Pulter Project shows what’s possible when the literary canon is expanded to include new writers and more women. Poets like Hester Pulter change our understanding about who could – and did – participate in the scientific, political and intellectual debates of centuries ago.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106747/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samantha Snively is a volunteer contributing editor The Pulter Project.</span></em></p>In a time when women were expected to be silent, no topic was off limits for Pulter, who penned verses about politics, science and loss. Her manuscript was just published in a free digital archive.Samantha Snively, PhD Candidate in Early Modern Literature, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1028332018-09-17T10:50:47Z2018-09-17T10:50:47ZDigitizing the vast ‘dark data’ in museum fossil collections<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236483/original/file-20180914-177965-18rfcei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=296%2C7%2C4290%2C3140&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With a lot not on display, museums may not even know all that's in their vast holdings.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/LA-Tar-Pits/b4ca06d8d3894287bb812f0d5c92024a/1/0">AP Photo/Jae C. Hong</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The great museums of the world harbor a secret: They’re home to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.352.6287.762">millions upon millions of natural history specimens</a> that almost never see the light of day. They lie hidden from public view, typically housed behind or above the public exhibit halls, or in off-site buildings.</p>
<p>What’s on public display represents only the tiniest fraction of the wealth of knowledge under the stewardship of each museum. Beyond fossils, museums are the repositories for what we know of the world’s living species, as well as much of our own cultural history. </p>
<p>For paleontologists, biologists and anthropologists, museums are like the historians’ archives. And like most archives – think of those housed in the Vatican or in the Library of Congress – each museum typically holds many unique specimens, the only data we have on the species they represent. </p>
<p>The uniqueness of each museum collection means that scientists routinely make pilgrimages worldwide to visit them. It also means that the loss of a collection, as in the recent heart-wrenching fire in Rio de Janeiro, represents an irreplaceable loss of knowledge. It’s akin to the loss of family history when a family elder passes away. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06192-9">In Rio, these losses included</a> one-of-a-kind dinosaurs, perhaps the oldest human remains ever found in South America, and the only audio recordings and documents of indigenous languages, including many that no longer have native speakers. Things we once knew, we know no longer; things we might have known can no longer be known.</p>
<p>But now digital technologies – including the internet, interoperable databases and rapid imaging techniques – make it possible to electronically aggregate museum data. Researchers, including a multi-institutional team <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UQhjq5QAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I</a> am leading, are laying the foundation for the coherent use of these millions of specimens. Across the globe, teams are working to bring these “dark data” – currently inaccessible via the web – into the digital light.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Researchers must travel to visit non-digitized specimens in person, not knowing what they will find – if they’re even aware of their existence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Smithsonian Institution</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What’s hidden away in drawers and boxes</h2>
<p>Paleontologists often describe the fossil record as incomplete. But for some groups the fossil record can be remarkably good. In many cases, there are plenty of previously collected specimens in museums to help scientists answer their research questions. The issue is how accessible – or not – they are.</p>
<p>The sheer size of fossil collections, and the fact that most of their contents were collected before the invention of computers and the internet, make it very difficult to aggregate the data associated with museum specimens. From a digital point of view, most of the world’s fossil collections represent “dark data.” The fact that large portions of existing museum collections are not computerized also means that <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/60536/11-things-lost-then-rediscovered-museums">lost treasures are waiting to be rediscovered</a> within museums themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High-resolution photos are an important part of the digitization process.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Smithsonian Institution</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the vision and investment of funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States, numerous museums are collaborating to digitally bring together their data from key parts of the fossil record. The <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/">University of California Museum of Paleontology</a> at Berkeley, where I work, is <a href="https://epicc.berkeley.edu/people-participants/">one of 10 museums</a> now aggregating some of their fossil data. Together through our digitized collections, we are working to understand how major environmental changes have affected marine ecosystems on the eastern coast of the Pacific Ocean, from Chile to Alaska, over the last 66 million years.</p>
<p>The digitization process itself includes adding the specimen’s collection data into the museum computer system if it hasn’t already been entered: its species identification, where it was found, and the age of the rocks it was found in. Then, we digitize the geographic location of where the specimen was collected, and take digital images that can be accessed via the web.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.idigbio.org/content/thematic-collections-networks">Integrated Digitized Biocollections</a> (iDigBio) site hosts all the major museum digitization efforts in the United States funded by the current NSF initiative that began in 2011.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=155&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=155&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Team members entering information about each fossil into a centralized database.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Smithsonian Institution</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Significantly, the cost of digitally aggregating the fossil data online, including the tens of thousands of images, is remarkably small compared with the cost it took to collect the fossils in the first place. It’s also less than the expense of maintaining the physical security and accessibility of these priceless resources – a cost that those supposed to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/world/americas/brazil-museum-fire.html">responsible for the museum in Rio apparently were not</a> willing to cover, with disastrous consequences.</p>
<h2>Digitized data can help answer research questions</h2>
<p>Our group, called EPICC for <a href="https://epicc.berkeley.edu/">Eastern Pacific Invertebrate Communities of the Cenozoic</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0431">quantified just how much “dark data”</a> are present in our joint collections. We found that our 10 museums contain fossils from 23 times the number of collection sites in California, Oregon and Washington than are currently documented in a leading online electronic database of the paleontological scientific literature, <a href="https://paleobiodb.org/">the Paleobiology Database</a>. </p>
<p>EPICC is using our newly digitized data to piece together a richer understanding of past ecological response to environmental change. We want to test ideas relevant to long- and short-term climate change. How did life recover from the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs? How did changes in ocean temperature drive marine ecosystem change, including those associated with the isolation of the cooler Pacific Ocean from the warmer Caribbean Sea when the land bridge at Panama first formed?</p>
<p>To answer these questions, all the relevant fossil data, drawn from many museums, needs to be easily accessible online to enable large-scale synthesis of those data. Digitization enables paleontologists to see the forest as a whole, rather than just as a myriad number of individual trees.</p>
<p>In some cases – such as records of past languages or the collection data associated with individual specimens – digital records help protect these invaluable resources. But, typically, the actual specimens remain crucial to understanding past change. Researchers often still need to make key measurements directly on the specimens themselves. </p>
<p>For example, Berkeley Ph.D. student Emily Orzechowski is using specimens being aggregated by the EPICC project to test the idea that the ocean off the Californian coast will become cooler with global climate change. Climate models predict increased global warming will lead to stronger winds down the coast, which will increase the coastal upwelling that brings frigid waters from the deep ocean to the surface – the cause of San Francisco’s famous summer fogs.</p>
<p>The test she’s using relies on mapping the distributions of huge numbers of fossils. She’s measuring subtle differences in the oxygen and carbon isotopes found in fossil clam and snail shells that date to the last interglacial period of Earth’s history about 120,000 years ago, when the west coast was warmer than it is today. Access to the real-life fossils is crucial in this kind of research.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Once digitized, information about a fossil is available worldwide, while the specimen itself remains available to visiting researchers to make crucial observations or measurements.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Deniz Durmis, contract photographer for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Understanding response to past change is not just restricted to fossils. For example, nearly a century ago the director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, <a href="http://mvz.berkeley.edu/Grinnell.html">Joseph Grinnell</a> at the University of California, Berkeley, undertook systematic collections of mammals and birds across California. Subsequently, the museum <a href="http://mvz.berkeley.edu/Grinnell/index.html">re-surveyed those precise localities</a>, discovering major changes in the distribution of many species, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805123115">loss of many bird species</a> in the Mojave Desert.</p>
<p>A key aspect of this work has been comparison of the DNA from the almost hundred-year-old museum specimens with DNA of animals alive today. The comparison revealed serious fragmentation of populations, and led to the identification of genetic changes in response to environmental change. Having the specimens is crucial to this kind of project.</p>
<p>This digital revolution is not just restricted to fossils and paleontology. It pertains to all museums collections. Curators and researchers are enormously <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.352.6287.762">excited by the power to be gained</a> as the museum collections of the world – from fossils to specimens from live-caught organisms – become accessible through the nascent digitization of our invaluable collections.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102833/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Marshall receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>A tiny percentage of museums’ natural history holdings are on display. Very little of these vast archives is digitized and available online. But museums are working to change that.Charles Marshall, Professor of Paleontology and Director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology, University of California, BerkeleyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/952802018-05-14T10:38:19Z2018-05-14T10:38:19ZThe next big discovery in astronomy? Scientists probably found it years ago – but they don’t know it yet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217776/original/file-20180504-166887-8ht3tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An artist's illustration of a black hole "eating" a star.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA20027">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this year, astronomers stumbled upon a fascinating finding: <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25029#main">Thousands of black holes likely exist</a> near the center of our galaxy. </p>
<p>The X-ray images that enabled this discovery <a href="http://chandra.harvard.edu/">weren’t from some state-of-the-art new telescope</a>. Nor were they even recently taken – some of the data was collected nearly 20 years ago. </p>
<p>No, the researchers discovered the black holes by digging through old, long-archived data. </p>
<p>Discoveries like this will only become more common, as the era of “big data” changes how science is done. Astronomers are gathering an exponentially greater amount of data every day – so much that it will take years to uncover all the hidden signals buried in the archives. </p>
<h2>The evolution of astronomy</h2>
<p>Sixty years ago, the typical astronomer worked largely alone or in a small team. They likely had access to a respectably large ground-based optical telescope at their home institution. </p>
<p>Their observations were largely confined to optical wavelengths – more or less what the eye can see. That meant they missed signals from a host of astrophysical sources, which can emit non-visible radiation from <a href="https://astrobites.org/guides/astronomy-the-electromagnetic-spectrum/">very low-frequency radio all the way up to high-energy gamma rays</a>. For the most part, if you wanted to do astronomy, you had to be an <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Edwin_Hubble.html?id=ts5-CrkyJnIC">academic or eccentric rich person</a> with access to a good telescope.</p>
<p>Old data was stored in the form of photographic plates or published catalogs. But accessing archives from other observatories could be difficult – and it was virtually impossible for amateur astronomers. </p>
<p>Today, there are observatories that cover the <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/ems/01_intro">entire electromagnetic spectrum</a>. No longer operated by single institutions, these state-of-the-art observatories are usually launched by space agencies and are often <a href="http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/about-alma-at-first-glance/global-collaboration/">joint efforts involving many countries</a>. </p>
<p>With the coming of the digital age, almost all data are publicly available shortly after they are obtained. This makes astronomy very democratic – anyone who wants to can reanalyze almost any data set that makes the news. (You too can look at the Chandra data that led to the discovery of thousands of black holes!) </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217993/original/file-20180507-46338-au8brc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217993/original/file-20180507-46338-au8brc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217993/original/file-20180507-46338-au8brc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217993/original/file-20180507-46338-au8brc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217993/original/file-20180507-46338-au8brc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217993/original/file-20180507-46338-au8brc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217993/original/file-20180507-46338-au8brc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217993/original/file-20180507-46338-au8brc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Hubble Space Telescope.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/this-week-in-nasa-history-hubble-space-telescope-deployed-april-25-1990.html">NASA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These observatories generate a staggering amount of data. For example, the Hubble Space Telescope, operating since 1990, has made over <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/story/index.html">1.3 million observations</a> and transmits around 20 GB of raw data every week, which is impressive for a telescope first designed in the 1970s. The <a href="http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/home/">Atacama Large Millimeter Array</a> in Chile now anticipates adding <a href="https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/alma/naasc-memo-series/naasc-memos/110.naasc-data-rates">2 TB of data</a> to its archives every day.</p>
<h2>Data firehose</h2>
<p>The archives of astronomical data are already impressively large. But things are about to explode. </p>
<p>Each generation of observatories are usually at least <a href="http://ecuip.lib.uchicago.edu/multiwavelength-astronomy/infrared/tools/15.html">10 times more sensitive than the previous</a>, either because of improved technology or because the mission is simply larger. Depending on how long a new mission runs, it can detect hundreds of times more astronomical sources than previous missions at that wavelength. </p>
<p>For example, compare the early EGRET gamma ray observatory, which flew in the 1990s, to NASA’s flagship mission Fermi, which turns 10 this year. <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/0806.0113">EGRET detected only about 190 gamma ray sources</a> in the sky. Fermi has seen <a href="https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/data/access/lat/fl8y/">over 5,000</a>. </p>
<p>The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, an optical telescope <a href="https://www.lsst.org/gallery/collection/construction-update-4">currently under construction in Chile</a>, will image the entire sky every few nights. It will be so sensitive that it will <a href="https://www.lsst.org/scientists/keynumbers">generate 10 million alerts per night</a> on new or transient sources, leading to a catalog of over 15 petabytes after 10 years.</p>
<p>The Square Kilometre Array, when completed in 2020, will be the most sensitive telescope in the world, capable of <a href="https://www.astrobio.net/alien-life/seti-on-the-ska/">detecting airport radar stations</a> of alien civilizations up to 50 light-years away. In just one year of activity, it will <a href="https://www.computerworld.com.au/article/392735/ska_telescope_generate_more_data_than_entire_internet_2020/">generate more data than the entire internet</a>.</p>
<p>These ambitious projects will test scientists’ ability to handle data. Images will need to be automatically processed – meaning that the data will need to be reduced down to a manageable size or transformed into a finished product. The new observatories are pushing the envelope of computational power, requiring facilities capable of processing <a href="https://www.lsst.org/about/dm/technology">hundreds of terabytes per day</a>. </p>
<p>The resulting archives – all publicly searchable – will contain 1 million times more information that what can be stored on your typical 1 TB backup disk.</p>
<h2>Unlocking new science</h2>
<p>The data deluge will make astronomy become a more collaborative and open science than ever before. Thanks to internet archives, <a href="https://photographingspace.com/download-hubble-data/">robust learning communities</a> and <a href="https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zookeeper/galaxy-zoo/">new outreach initiatives</a>, citizens can now participate in science. For example, with the computer program <a href="https://einsteinathome.org/">Einstein@Home</a>, anyone can use their computer’s idle time to help search for rapidly-rotating neutron stars. </p>
<p>It’s an exciting time for scientists, too. Astronomers like myself often study physical phenomena on timescales so wildly beyond the typical human lifetime that watching them in real-time just isn’t going to happen. Events like a typical galaxy merger – <a href="https://phys.org/news/2017-10-image-hubble-captures-collision-galaxies.html">which is exactly what it sounds like</a> – can take hundreds of millions of years. All we can capture is a snapshot, like a single still frame from a video of a car accident. </p>
<p>However, there are some phenomena that occur on shorter timescales, taking just a few decades, years <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0034-4885/69/8/R01/meta">or even seconds</a>. That’s how scientists discovered those thousands of black holes in the new study. It’s also how they <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/792/2/L29/meta">recently realized</a> that the X-ray emission from the center of a nearby dwarf galaxy has been fading since first detected in the 1990s. These new discoveries suggest that more will be found in archival data spanning decades. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218114/original/file-20180508-184630-13uu4fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218114/original/file-20180508-184630-13uu4fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218114/original/file-20180508-184630-13uu4fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218114/original/file-20180508-184630-13uu4fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218114/original/file-20180508-184630-13uu4fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218114/original/file-20180508-184630-13uu4fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218114/original/file-20180508-184630-13uu4fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218114/original/file-20180508-184630-13uu4fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A black-hole-powered jet of hot gas in the giant elliptical galaxy M87.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://hubblesite.org/image/3228/news_release/2013-32">NASA, ESA, E. Meyer, W. Sparks, J. Biretta, J. Anderson, S.T. Sohn, and R. van der Marel (STScI), C. Norman (Johns Hopkins University), and M. Nakamura (Academia Sinica)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my own work, I use Hubble archives to make <a href="http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2015-19">movies of “jets,”</a> high-speed plasma ejected in beams from black holes. I used over 400 raw images spanning 13 years to make a <a href="http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2013-32">movie of the jet in nearby galaxy M87</a>. That movie showed, for the first time, the twisting motions of the plasma, suggesting that the jet has a helical structure. </p>
<p>This kind of work was only possible because other observers, for other purposes, just happened to capture images of the source I was interested in, back when I was in kindergarten. As astronomical images become larger, higher resolution and ever more sensitive, this kind of research will become the norm.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct what Einstein@Home searches for.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95280/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eileen Meyer receives funding from NASA and the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Astronomers are gathering an exponentially greater amount of data every day – so much that it will take years to uncover all the hidden signals buried in the archives.Eileen Meyer, Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/749022017-05-01T01:58:13Z2017-05-01T01:58:13ZA digital archive of slave voyages details the largest forced migration in history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167028/original/file-20170427-15097-19mqhh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A slave fortress in Cape Coast, Ghana.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-I-GHA-NY451-GHANA-SLAVE-CASTLES/c5471cafcde0da11af9f0014c2589dfb/26/0">AP Photo/Clement N'Taye</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Between 1500 and 1866, slave traders forced <a href="http://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates">12.5 million</a> Africans aboard transatlantic slave vessels. Before 1820, four enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic for every European, making Africa the demographic wellspring for the repopulation of the Americas after Columbus’ voyages. The slave trade pulled <a href="http://slavevoyages.org/assessment/intro-maps">virtually every port</a> that faced the Atlantic Ocean – from Copenhagen to Cape Town and Boston to Buenos Aires – into its orbit.</p>
<p>To document this enormous trade – the largest forced oceanic migration in human history – our team launched <a href="http://www.slavevoyages.org">Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database</a>, a freely available online resource that lets visitors search through and analyze information on nearly 36,000 slave voyages that occurred between 1514 and 1866. </p>
<p>Inspired by the remarkable public response, we developed an animation feature that helps bring into clearer focus the horrifying scale and duration of the trade. The site also implemented a system for visitors to contribute new data. In the last year alone we have added more than a thousand new voyages and revised details on many others. </p>
<p>The data have revolutionized scholarship on the slave trade and provided the foundation for new insights into how enslaved people experienced and resisted their captivity. They have also further underscored the distinctive transatlantic connections that the trade fostered.</p>
<iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/3o7bubi6p8AiWkeK52" width="100%" height="350" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p>Records of unique slave voyages lie at the heart of the project. Clicking on individual voyages listed in the site opens their profiles, which comprise more than 70 distinct fields that collectively help tell that voyage’s story. </p>
<p>From which port did the voyage begin? To which places in Africa did it go? How many enslaved people perished during the Middle Passage? And where did those enslaved Africans end the oceanic portion of their enslavement and begin their lives as slaves in the Americas?</p>
<h2>Working with complex data</h2>
<p>Given the size and complexity of the slave trade, combining the sources that document slave ships’ activities into a single database has presented numerous challenges. Records are written in numerous languages and maintained in archives, libraries and private collections located in dozens of countries. Many of these are developing nations that lack the financial resources to invest in sustained systems of document preservation.</p>
<p>Even when they are relatively easy to access, documents on slave voyages provide uneven information. <a href="https://mchsct.org/exhibits-displays/a-vanished-port-middletown-the-caribbean-1750-1824/a-vanished-port-slave-ship-logbooks/">Ship logs</a> comprehensively describe places of travel and list the numbers of enslaved people purchased and the captain and crew. By contrast, port-entry records in newspapers might merely produce the name of the vessel and the number of captives who survived the Middle Passage. </p>
<p>These varied sources can be hard to reconcile. The numbers of slaves loaded or removed from a particular vessel might vary widely. Or perhaps a vessel carried registration papers that aimed to mask its actual origins, especially after the legal abolition of the trade in 1808.</p>
<p>Compiling these data in a way that does justice to their complexity, while still keeping the site user-friendly, has remained <a href="http://slavevoyages.org/voyage/understanding-db">an ongoing concern</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166122/original/file-20170420-21495-62z61a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166122/original/file-20170420-21495-62z61a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166122/original/file-20170420-21495-62z61a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166122/original/file-20170420-21495-62z61a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166122/original/file-20170420-21495-62z61a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166122/original/file-20170420-21495-62z61a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166122/original/file-20170420-21495-62z61a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166122/original/file-20170420-21495-62z61a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Volume and direction of the transatlantic slave trade from all African to all American regions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://slavevoyages.org/assessment/intro-maps">David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New Haven, 2010)</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, not all slave voyages left surviving records. Gaps will consequently remain in coverage, even if they continue to narrow. Perhaps three out of every four slaving voyages are now documented in the database. Aiming to account for missing data, a separate <a href="http://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates">assessment tool</a> enables users to gain a clear understanding of the volume and structure of the slave trade and consider how it changed over time and across space.</p>
<h2>Engagement with Voyages site</h2>
<p>While gathering data on the slave trade is not new, using these data to compile comprehensive databases for the public has become feasible only in the internet age. Digital projects make it possible to reach a much larger audience with more diverse interests. We often hear from teachers and students who use the site in the classroom, from scholars whose research draws on material in the database and from individuals who consult the project to better understand their heritage. </p>
<p>Through a <a href="http://slavevoyages.org/accounts/login/">contribute function</a>, site visitors can also submit new material on transatlantic slave voyages and help us identify errors in the data.</p>
<p>The real strength of the project – and of digital history more generally – is that it encourages visitors to interact with sources and materials that they might not otherwise be able to access. That turns users into historians, allowing them to contextualize a single slave voyage or analyze local, national and Atlantic-wide patterns. How did the survival rate among captives during the Middle Passage change over time? What was the typical ratio of male to female captives? How often did insurrections occur aboard slave ships? From which African port did most enslaved people sent to, say, Virginia originate?</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166124/original/file-20170420-21495-1f9zhhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166124/original/file-20170420-21495-1f9zhhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166124/original/file-20170420-21495-1f9zhhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166124/original/file-20170420-21495-1f9zhhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166124/original/file-20170420-21495-1f9zhhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166124/original/file-20170420-21495-1f9zhhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166124/original/file-20170420-21495-1f9zhhx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">H.M.S. ‘Rattler’ captures the slaver ‘Andorinha’ in August 1849.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://slavevoyages.org/resources/images/category/Vessels/3">The Illustrated London News (Dec. 29, 1849), vol. 15, p. 440</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scholars have used Voyages to address these and many other questions and have in the process transformed our understanding of just about every aspect of the slave trade. We learned that shipboard revolts occurred most often among slaves who came from regions in Africa that supplied comparatively few slaves. Ports tended to send slave vessels to the same African regions in search of enslaved people and dispatch them to familiar places for sale in the Americas. Indeed, slave voyages followed a seasonal pattern that was conditioned at least in part by agricultural cycles on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The slave trade was both highly structured and carefully organized. </p>
<p>The website also continues to collect <a href="http://slavevoyages.org/education/lesson-plans">lesson plans</a> that teachers have created for middle school, high school and college students. In one exercise, students must create a memorial to the captives who experienced the Middle Passage, using the site to inform their thinking. <a href="https://www.crl.edu/focus/article/12176">One college course</a> situates students in late 18th-century Britain, turning them into collaborators in the abolition campaign who use Voyages to gather critical information on the slave trade’s operations.</p>
<p>Voyages has also provided a model for other projects, including a <a href="http://news.ucsc.edu/2016/05/greg-omalley-slavetrade.html">forthcoming database</a> that documents slave ships that operated strictly within the Americas. </p>
<p>We also continue to work in parallel with the <a href="http://african-origins.org/">African Origins</a> database. The project invites users to identify the likely backgrounds of nearly 100,000 Africans liberated from slave vessels based on their indigenous names. By combining those names with information from Voyages on liberated Africans’ ports of origin, the Origins website aims to better understand the homelands from which enslaved people came. </p>
<p>Through these endeavors, Voyages has become a digital memorial to the millions of enslaved Africans forcibly pulled into the slave trade and, until recently, nearly erased from the history of not only the trade itself, but also the history of the Atlantic world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Misevich has previously received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Program.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Domingues has previously received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Luso-American Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Eltis receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Radburn has previously received funding from the Doris G. Quinn Foundation and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nafees M. Khan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An online database explores the nearly 36,000 slave voyages that occurred between 1514 and 1866.Philip Misevich, Assistant Professor of History, St. John's UniversityDaniel Domingues, Assistant Professor of History, University of Missouri-ColumbiaDavid Eltis, Professor Emeritus of History, Emory UniversityNafees M. Khan, Lecturer in Social Studies Education, Clemson UniversityNicholas Radburn, Postdoctoral Fellow, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/637592016-08-15T20:07:13Z2016-08-15T20:07:13ZMagnetic memoir: a love letter to VHS from the archives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133742/original/image-20160811-28149-rkm3kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gillian Armstrong's 1971 student film The Roof Needs Mowing featured a bathtub full of baked beans.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">VCA Film & Television School</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I shot my first film on you. A bunch of awkward high school kids, an abandoned warehouse and a badly written horror script called Reigning Terror. I cast from my local church; we caught the train in to the city on a Sunday. I carried you in that dark grey plastic case; a more well defined briefcase that made me look interesting. I had purpose: hell, I was making a movie! I felt mature.</p>
<p>I stayed late after school editing you all together. You captured my vision, you finished my vision – you were my master… tape. You were solid, real and fun to carry and put in the machine. I understood you. I made other movies with you too before I graduated and moved on to more mature models, like Super VHS and Betacam. But I never forgot you. You were my first.</p>
<p>I collected you on my shelf; you held pieces of my late youth complete: the short films, music videos; later the show reel and those awkward acting pieces. I took you from house to house. Ten houses in ten years – you came with me. I would show you to each new partner, sharing scenes from my life. The more I played you, the worse you seemed to get, but it didn’t matter. On one machine, I remembered Reigning Terror had all the dialogue stripped. Oh well, I thought, you were getting old. I hadn’t really looked after you that well through the hot summers and many moves.</p>
<p>Fast forward and the age of digital has arrived. DVDs are the new thing, then Blu-Ray and now just an online file and a hard drive. It all happened so quickly and I migrated from one medium to another with little thought as to who you once were. I wasn’t particularly nostalgic; rather I was modern and fickle. I jumped from one thing to the next, making, mastering, moving on.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133743/original/image-20160811-20932-9z70x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133743/original/image-20160811-20932-9z70x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133743/original/image-20160811-20932-9z70x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133743/original/image-20160811-20932-9z70x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133743/original/image-20160811-20932-9z70x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133743/original/image-20160811-20932-9z70x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133743/original/image-20160811-20932-9z70x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133743/original/image-20160811-20932-9z70x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A still from director Nikki Caro’s (Whale Rider, 2002) 1990 student film Virgin, Whore, Saint. Filmed on 16mm, it was recently digitised as part of a project to keep VCA student films accessible.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">VCA Film & Television School</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I started working at that film school I studied at. Amongst other things, I took over the distribution of short films that had generated a buzz beyond academic doors. The filmmakers started to share with me that they felt the films they once made went into the film school vault and died. I sympathised. </p>
<p>Someone suggested we should just release all of our films online in our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkXceh2K46CDbIJA4Ue61Tw">very own YouTube channel</a>. I ran with the idea. It became my master’s project, now PhD. The challenge: to digitise and preserve 50 years of audiovisual material from Australia’s oldest film school. I moved house again and decided to bring you to work with me and store you on my shelves. A reminder of the early work I made – my journey.</p>
<p>One day I decided it was time to transfer you to DVD. I was worried you wouldn’t be there, but you were – as tough as ever. This time the playback decks were good and I could still hear the badly recorded dialogue in Reigning Terror. I sat watching my work from 16 to 19 years old – a true blast from the past. It had been years since I had seen you. The images spoke of an unconscious grappling with the trauma I was now working on in therapy. I was using you as an early recovery tool; a healing tool – albeit clumsily.</p>
<p>I skipped to the collection I was now embarking on digitising. What made these films unique and worth salvaging? Were the makers like me? Did they use the moving image to convey their unknown truths or secrets? Did they know it at the time? Was the question of knowing your audience too abstract at such a young age? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133732/original/image-20160811-18023-13b4cb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133732/original/image-20160811-18023-13b4cb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133732/original/image-20160811-18023-13b4cb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133732/original/image-20160811-18023-13b4cb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133732/original/image-20160811-18023-13b4cb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133732/original/image-20160811-18023-13b4cb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133732/original/image-20160811-18023-13b4cb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133732/original/image-20160811-18023-13b4cb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A still from Melodie Shen’s student film The Kid In The Closet (2013).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">VCA Fim & Television School</span></span>
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<p>The stuff I was making in those years was solely about me; a deep drive to connect with self; self that had been terrorised and dissociated. I had the power and control to edit my hidden suffering into some sort of narrative – whether good or bad, it didn’t matter. Reaching an audience beyond my film crew and me, served to only give me back a smattering of self-esteem.</p>
<p>Now I was responsible for digitising and making accessible 1,700 student films – 1,700 slices of memory and explorations of identity. I discovered recurring themes exploring sexual identity, abuse, family, migration to Australia, gender politics, refugees, disability, grief and death. Indeed, many filmmakers toyed with ideas and interests that would later play out in their later work and reach a far greater audience in mainstream cinemas. </p>
<p>Robert Luketic’s highly camp and stylised musical <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126103/">Titsiana Booberini</a> (1996) scored him the directing job on the classic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250494/">Legally Blonde</a> (2001). Jamie Blank’s student horror film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZovwjdFt2o">Silent Number</a> (1993) was reminiscent of his later work in Hollywood with teen horror flicks like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0146336/">Urban Legend</a> (1998) and John Hillcoat’s experimental western <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-4LvEyg9Ho">Frankie and Johnny (We’re Lovers)</a> (1982) foreshadowed the setting and the story world of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421238/">The Proposition</a> (2005) on which he collaborated with his film school colleague production designer Chris Kennedy, and worked with screenwriter Nick Cave.</p>
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<p>There were hidden gems such as Emma Kate Croghan’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoZxvNdYQ3g">Sexy Girls, Sexy Appliances</a> (1991) that spoke directly to a historically distinctive period of second wave feminism that explored representation of women on screen. Animation films, such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0288275/">Uncle</a> (1996) by Oscar winning filmmaker Adam Elliot (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978762/">Mary and Max</a> (2009), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382734/">Harvey Krumpet</a> (2003)), highlighted the strong aesthetic vision and significance of films in the archive, merging claymation with the touching subject of family illness and death. We started to digitise stills associated with the films and realised that Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths and Sigrid Thornton had once starred in the short films as a way to break into the business. I had only just touched the tip of the iceberg. </p>
<p>I was beginning to learn the true value of preserving a hidden collection – in terms of how it could contribute to conversations around our cultural, social and historical heritage. The graduate’s work was a fresh voice in contemporary culture, a cry of our times. Film was a vehicle in which the students explored their identity and raised concerns about their place in society and it enabled them to enter a political, religious or intercultural discourse.</p>
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<p>I started to learn that many archivists believed that to digitise was to make accessible. Digitisation wasn’t about preservation; it was about making a decision to move onto a new medium, with the view that the material would need to be migrated every three to five years. Just like you, who came with me from rental to rental, so too would the moving image continue to do just that – keep moving – from reel to reel, tape-to-tape, codec to codec, if we didn’t keep migrating with you, you would be lost forever. I feared the moving image was ephemeral, yet unlike the deliberate ephemeral nature of performance art in the 60s and 70s, I thought the moving image was meant to be stable, fixed, permanent – classic.</p>
<p>It was soon after this that I heard the news; it even got a slot on The Project. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/please-rewind-a-final-farewell-to-the-vcr-63050">last known maker of VHS had stopped production</a> and within seven to ten years the tapes would be unreadable. There would be no more machines to play you because they weren’t going to make them anymore. The people who knew how to fix them would be dead soon, the machines would become obsolete, the trade knowledge and experience lost. Another job that wouldn’t exist anymore, like the milkman and the switchboard operator. Will the social media expert die a similar death?</p>
<p>What would happen to all the stories on these tapes now that they could no longer be played? What about all the other people who have recorded on you? Where will their memories go? Do they care? Would you give them insight into their own behaviour, personality and faults, the way you did with mine?</p>
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<p>The thing was, I knew you were going to deteriorate one day. Even if I had of stored you better in the hope of increased life expectancy, it seems my efforts would have been futile. I am glad I got to transfer you to another medium, even if it is DVD and you are just shelved in my top drawer. I will put you online one day my friend, in my own little digital storage vault, password protected. You will be safe.</p>
<p>I’m trying my best to spread the word though. To tell others that the only way to save you and all you hold is to transfer you, before it’s too late. That they must choose a digital medium (like <a href="http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/5-things-you-should-know-about-prores/">ProRes 422</a>) and keep transferring you from drive to drive. Only then will you be safe.</p>
<p>Like our film school shorts’, perhaps there will be a new wave of VHS and magnetic stories hitting our small screens; historic film shows, collections from the 70s and 80s or mash ups. There could be a richer stock of moving images for historians and researchers to give value to, and from which to understand our cultural heritage.</p>
<p>I thank you Mr VHS for inspiring me, trusting me and helping me learn more about who I am. You were my first true love. May your magnetic existence live on in codecs and bits.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63759/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donna Lyon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In less than a decade, most people won’t be able to play a VHS tape anymore. Let’s farewell the humble tape, and celebrate the archives finding their way to digitisation and YouTube.Donna Lyon, VCA Screen Production Coordinator, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/623972016-07-13T12:50:21Z2016-07-13T12:50:21ZSnapchat’s new Memories function could change the way we remember<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130411/original/image-20160713-12353-1u8qnv8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Social media has changed. After 10 years of popular use, the information in our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter profiles is no longer just about the current moment or instant connections. Instead of simply broadcasting our thoughts and actions as they happen, these platforms have become a <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137270047">biographical archive</a> of our lives, storing our photos and recording where we went and who we were with. The result of this archiving is that social media is taking on a new role in the way that we remember.</p>
<p>Even the most ephemeral social media platform, Snapchat, has now joined in this archiving process with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/07/snapchat-memories-photo-messaging-service">launch of its Memories feature</a>. Until now, Snapchat’s unique selling point has been that its picture messages were designed to disappear within seconds of being sent. The new function lets you build a “personal collection of your favourite moments” (that is, archive images taken with your phone), which can then be kept private or shared.</p>
<p>The sociologist <a href="http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/2-3/591.short">Mike Featherstone</a> has argued that humans have a powerful impulse to archive. We even see this in the history of the modern state, which today wants to <a href="https://theconversation.com/investigatory-powers-bill-will-remove-isps-right-to-protect-your-privacy-50178">capture and record</a> large amounts of information about peoples’ lives. Smartphones and the internet mean that we can now satisfy this drive at the level of our everyday lives. Snapchat’s Memories feature seems to exactly fit with this impulse. </p>
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<p>So if we rely more and more on social media to archive our memories, how will it shape how we remember? As time passes, more of people’s lives will be captured in these profiles. And when we want to remember our lives and the lives of the people we connect with, we will inevitably turn to the data stored in these social media archives. Our memories might then be shaped by the types of things that we choose to include in our visible social media profiles, or even in less visible spaces
protected by our <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2013.777757">privacy settings</a> (as included in the Memories feature).</p>
<p>Featherstone has also argued that an archive, as a space in which documents are captured and classified, is “<a href="http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/2-3/591.short">a place for creating and reworking memory</a>”. What we put in our social profiles and how we classify it will then shape what is remembered and how those memories are recalled. For example, the tags and labels we add to photos stored online will affect what we later recall about the occasion and the people who were there. Our social media profiles are <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2013.763834">filtered versions of our lives</a> that display a <a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745640020">managed persona</a>, so they will likely create an archive of certain types of favourable memories that fit with this persona.</p>
<h2>Making social media about the past</h2>
<p>As we come increasingly to rely on social media as an archive, the way we add to it will also inevitably change. We won’t just be posting in the moment but will also have an eye on the future. We will be thinking about the way that our content will be received and imagining how it will be drawn upon to remember our past from some unknown future moment. We might, for instance, post about our holidays on the basis of how we will wish to look back on that trip. It will change how we use social media to record any moment or period in our lives. </p>
<p>This is one of the ways in which the philosopher Jacques Derrida claimed that archives operate. He said archives are a kind of <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo3624599.html">“pledge” to the future</a>. We make judgements, he claimed, about what to include and how to tag it, based on how we imagine it will be used in the future. So, as people use Snapchat Memories and other services like it, they will be posting based on a vision of how it might be used in the future to evoke memories.</p>
<p>This use of social media to remember, with our profiles being individual and collective archives of our lives, will mean that the content created will shape future memories. These memories will be created and reworked through the choices we make about what to include in our profiles and will also be a product of how we imagine that memorialisation to play out in the future. Social media might be about broadcasting our lives and connecting with networks, but these new features mean that they are also based upon a pledge to future memories.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62397/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Beer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Social media is creating an archive that will shape the way we see our past.David Beer, Reader in Sociology, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/552632016-05-17T10:11:17Z2016-05-17T10:11:17ZIn a digital archive of fugitive slave ads, a new portrait of slavery emerges<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122739/original/image-20160516-15937-1955t2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Eastman Johnson's 'A Ride for Liberty' (ca. 1862) depicts a family of slaves galloping for the safety of the North in the early morning light.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Eastman_Johnson_-_A_Ride_for_Liberty_--_The_Fugitive_Slaves_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Brooklyn Museum</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Among the <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2012/10/how_many_slaves_came_to_america_fact_vs_fiction.html">millions</a> of people enslaved in the United States before 1865, hundreds of thousands attempted to flee from those who held them in bondage. </p>
<p>Some left temporarily to protest mistreatment. Others sought to reunite with loved ones from whom they had been forced apart. Many simply wanted freedom.</p>
<p><em>Joshua Rothman talked about this research on the <a href="http://academicminute.org/">Academic Minute</a></em>.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="150" data-image="" data-title="A new portrait of slavery emerges" data-size="2400783" data-source="The Academic Minute (July 28, 2016)" data-source-url="http://academicminute.org/2016/07/joshua-rothman-university-of-alabama-a-new-portrait-of-slavery-emerges/" data-license="" data-license-url="">
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A new portrait of slavery emerges.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="http://academicminute.org/2016/07/joshua-rothman-university-of-alabama-a-new-portrait-of-slavery-emerges/">The Academic Minute (July 28, 2016)</a><span class="download"><span>2.29 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/457/07-28-16-alabama-a-new-portrait-of-slavery-emerges.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<p>These fugitives from American slavery often left no trace in the historical record, but we can document the flight of many of them. After all, to their white owners, enslaved people were valuable property – well worth the time, effort and resources devoted to their capture. The method most likely to produce results was enlisting other white people in the search by publicly offering a reward.</p>
<p>Open practically any issue of any southern newspaper from the decades before the Civil War and you’ll see advertisements placed by slaveholders searching for runaway slaves. Perhaps as many as 200,000 of these notices appeared in the public prints of the South, and each one attaches a name and a story to a fugitive. </p>
<p>Historians have known about and used runaway advertisements before, of course, but they’ve never all been gathered in one easily accessible place. So in 2014, a team of scholars led by myself, Edward Baptist of Cornell University, and Mary Niall Mitchell of the University of New Orleans began collaborating on a project called <a href="http://freedomonthemove.org">Freedom on the Move</a> to collect and digitize these ads. </p>
<p>After every one of the names and stories in them becomes available to and searchable by scholars and the general public, we hope we will understand, in new ways, the lives and experiences of those who resisted slavery by trying to liberate themselves.</p>
<h2>A window into a life</h2>
<p>Runaway advertisements were essentially wanted posters for people whose crime was pursuing their own freedom, and slaveholders provided as much detail about those people as possible in order to maximize the chances for recapture.</p>
<p>An advertisement might include a fugitive’s name, age, height, build and skin color. But it could also note specialized skills (“a brick-layer by trade”), languages spoken, distinctive physical markings, and signs of work injuries or torture (“the end of the forefinger of the left hand has been cut off”). Some might note the way a person carried him- or herself (“when walking inclines to lean forward”). A slaveholder could provide details about what a fugitive was wearing when he or she fled, indicate whether he or she could read and write, or speculate about an escaped person’s potential destination. </p>
<p>While slaveholders designed runaway advertisements to put the surveillance efforts of the state and the broader white populace at their disposal, they also unwittingly provided windows into the lives of the men, women and children who were desperately trying to free themselves from bondage and forge their own destinies.</p>
<h2>The power of a digitization</h2>
<p>By amassing all of these advertisements under the umbrella of one database, we’ll be able to digitally analyze thousands of them at the same time. This has the potential to open avenues for researchers to make discoveries that might have otherwise been impossible. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122743/original/image-20160516-15920-1ql7x45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122743/original/image-20160516-15920-1ql7x45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122743/original/image-20160516-15920-1ql7x45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122743/original/image-20160516-15920-1ql7x45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122743/original/image-20160516-15920-1ql7x45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122743/original/image-20160516-15920-1ql7x45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122743/original/image-20160516-15920-1ql7x45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122743/original/image-20160516-15920-1ql7x45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An ad for a fugitive slave named Bob from June 1829.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Huntsville Southern Advocate</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, we could map the places slaves fled from and where their owners imagined they might try to end up, allowing us to visualize a new landscape of movement. We can document changing patterns of flight over time, and across multiple geographies. </p>
<p>We can also create detailed demographic profiles of those who fled, and gain insight into strategies deployed by fugitives as they tried to ensure they would not be caught. How often, for example, did enslaved people steal free papers and attempt to travel under an assumed name, as a man named Bob, who lived near Huntsville, Alabama, did in 1829? How many people were there like Harry, who fled in 1832 from a farm near Jackson, Mississippi, and whose owner was certain he would not only claim to be free but would “dress in and pass as a woman, so as not to be apprehended”?</p>
<h2>Heroic attempts at self-liberation</h2>
<p>Indeed, we imagine that for most users of Freedom on the Move, the individual stories of fugitives from slavery will linger longest. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122742/original/image-20160516-15926-1mqeixz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122742/original/image-20160516-15926-1mqeixz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122742/original/image-20160516-15926-1mqeixz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122742/original/image-20160516-15926-1mqeixz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122742/original/image-20160516-15926-1mqeixz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122742/original/image-20160516-15926-1mqeixz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122742/original/image-20160516-15926-1mqeixz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122742/original/image-20160516-15926-1mqeixz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Goodson placed an ad for for runaways Moses and Zilphey in June 1825.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Southern Advocate and Huntsville Advertiser</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It takes little imagination to see the horrors they’d experienced, the risks they were willing to take to escape them and the complications of family ties those risks entailed.</p>
<p>Consider the journey of fugitives Moses and Zilphey, who were probably a married couple and were sought by James Goodson of Montgomery, Alabama, in June 1825. In the advertisement he placed in the paper offering US$50 for their capture, Goodson explained that Moses and Zilphey had first fled from him a year earlier and had made it more than 75 miles north before they were caught and put in the Shelby County jail. Goodson had sent someone to take them into custody and return them, only to have the couple escape from that person. By the time Goodson put out his advertisement, the two had been at large for nearly 10 months – no easy feat, considering they needed to endure the winter, and Moses walked despite having “lost some of his toes off each foot.” Zilphey, meanwhile, likely faced an even more difficult challenge: Goodson wrote “she may have had a child during her absence.” </p>
<p>And take the story of Charles, a 30-year-old man who fled from Joseph Gray near Huntsville, Alabama, in March 1827. In his advertisement, Gray explained that Charles had been brought to Alabama from Virginia, and that this was the second time he’d run away. Gray reported that Charles had made it as far as Nashville on that first occasion; he’d been caught with a white man who was pretending to own him in order to provide cover. Now Gray suspected that Charles “may be playing that same game over.” We don’t know whether or not Charles succeeded in escaping. But with Gray’s mention that Charles had a “back much marked by the whip,” we can guess that he had plenty of incentive to keep trying.</p>
<p>Treated as villains and criminals, in truth enslaved people such as Moses, Zilphey and Charles engaged in heroic efforts to free themselves. Freedom on the Move promises to return their stories, and those of tens of thousands of others, to the public consciousness where they belong.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55263/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua D. Rothman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With Freedom on the Move, historians hope to reveal patterns of escape and capture, while giving anyone the chance to learn about the individual heroism of runaway slaves.Joshua D. Rothman, Professor of History, University of AlabamaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/555682016-03-21T19:27:33Z2016-03-21T19:27:33ZThe race to digitise language records of the Pacific region before it is too late<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113934/original/image-20160305-17726-nx9iyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Z'graggen's tapes from Madang.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Thieberger</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A suitcase of reel-to-reel audio tapes arrived recently at the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. They were from Madang, in Papua New Guinea (PNG), were made in the 1960s and some contain the only known records of some of the languages of PNG.</p>
<p>There are very few records of most of the 800 or so languages in PNG, so every new resource is important. Languages are complex systems that encode knowledge of the world developed over many years. Small groups or tribes evolve unique ways of being, which each in their own way tell us something of what it means to be human. </p>
<p>Several years of sleuthing and negotiating have led to this moment when the tapes will be digitised and archived in Australia. The digital versions will be returned to Madang.</p>
<p>The team that has worked on this are from the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (<a href="http://paradisec.org.au/home.html">PARADISEC</a>), a research project based at Sydney, Melbourne and ANU that has been running since 2003.</p>
<p>PARADISEC has found and digitised more than 5,600 hours of recordings in 900 languages, and has built the digital infrastructure for linguists and musicologists to safely house the priceless recordings they make in the course of their research.</p>
<p>While the research importance of these recordings is enormous (some are the only recording for a particular language), the archive also provides access for the people recorded and for their families and communities, thus helping Australia to be a good neighbour to the Pacific region.</p>
<p>The recordings contain narratives, songs, conversation – whatever was able to be recorded at the time. The tapes we look for are those made by researchers using audio recorders and occasionally making movies, technology that was available from the 1950s.</p>
<p>In the past, little emphasis was placed on the importance of these primary materials. Collections of tapes were not cared for and, when the researcher died, they were sometimes left in personal collections for an executor to deal with. </p>
<p>If the tapes were stored in humid conditions, they could get mouldy, as you can see in the image (below), and can then take some effort to clean and get ready to be played.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113922/original/image-20160304-17730-rrf7bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113922/original/image-20160304-17730-rrf7bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113922/original/image-20160304-17730-rrf7bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113922/original/image-20160304-17730-rrf7bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113922/original/image-20160304-17730-rrf7bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113922/original/image-20160304-17730-rrf7bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113922/original/image-20160304-17730-rrf7bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113922/original/image-20160304-17730-rrf7bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mould can destroy the recording so these tapes will need time-consuming cleaning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Thieberger</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Oral traditions</h2>
<p>The recordings that do exist can be used to relearn traditions. For oral cultures, there are no libraries to go to when you want to find out what your ancestors knew, but recordings of those ancestors can help reconnect with this oral tradition.</p>
<p>When the 2004 tsunami wiped out whole communities in Aceh, some languages and musical traditions were the unnoticed victims. PARADISEC has recordings of language and musical performance made along the west coast of Aceh in the 1980s in communities that no longer exist after the tsunami.</p>
<p>But languages are not just lost through natural disasters. More often major languages impose themselves, typically in colonial contexts where little choice is available to speakers of minority languages.</p>
<p>The affection keenly felt for a language is replaced by chagrin at its loss and then by some joy at discovering recordings that have kept aspects of the language alive. Once digitised, they are on the web, often as the only available online source for the language.</p>
<h2>Uncovering the unknown</h2>
<p>In among the audio in PARADISEC are recordings that have no descriptions. If there’s nothing written on the tape box, and we know it is important from the context of other tapes, then these files can be put online in the hope that someone will let us know what they contain.</p>
<p>Listen to these short snippets for a taste of the range of recordings we hold.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="20" data-image="" data-title="Bert Voorhoeve (collector), Bert Voorhoeve (recorder), Dina & Noguy (speaker), 1967; BA 4 1966 (28)" data-size="320640" data-source="PARADISEC Catalog" data-source-url="http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/CLV1/items/178" data-license="CC BY-NC-SA" data-license-url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/338/clv1-178-a.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Bert Voorhoeve (collector), Bert Voorhoeve (recorder), Dina & Noguy (speaker), 1967; BA 4 1966 (28)
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/CLV1/items/178">PARADISEC Catalog</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a><span class="download"><span>313 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/338/clv1-178-a.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p>This <a href="http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/CLV1/items/178">recording</a> is most likely in the Ba language.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="20" data-image="" data-title="Stephen (S A ) Wurm (collector), Helen Wurm (depositor); Continuation of Story 2" data-size="320640" data-source="PARADISEC Catalog" data-source-url="http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/SAW2/items/101" data-license="CC BY-NC-SA" data-license-url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/336/saw2-101-a.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Stephen (S A ) Wurm (collector), Helen Wurm (depositor); Continuation of Story 2.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/SAW2/items/101">PARADISEC Catalog</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a><span class="download"><span>313 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/336/saw2-101-a.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p>This <a href="http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/SAW2/items/101">recording</a> is in a language of the Solomon Islands.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="20" data-image="" data-title="Unknown singing, Solomons Museum (collector), 1974" data-size="320640" data-source="PARADISEC Catalog" data-source-url="http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/SINM/items/OTP174" data-license="CC BY-NC-SA" data-license-url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/335/sinm-otp174-a.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Unknown singing, Solomons Museum (collector), 1974.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/SINM/items/OTP174">PARADISEC Catalog</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a><span class="download"><span>313 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/335/sinm-otp174-a.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p>This <a href="http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/SINM/items/OTP174">recording</a> is from the Solomon Islands Museum. All we know about it is that it contains singing. </p>
<p>Putting digital files on the web (with whatever access conditions the depositors require) means that they can be found by those most interested in them, typically the speakers themselves or their families.</p>
<p>Mobile phones are now available in even the most remote parts of the region and are owned by at least <a href="http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2015/06/16/Not-appy-in-Melanesia.aspx">80% of people in Vanuatu and 94% in PNG</a>. Accessing the internet in this way means that we make files available in formats that save on bandwidth. We also provide as much of a description of them as we can to make them <a href="http://catalog.paradisec.org.au">findable</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113927/original/image-20160305-17740-1070w6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113927/original/image-20160305-17740-1070w6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113927/original/image-20160305-17740-1070w6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113927/original/image-20160305-17740-1070w6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113927/original/image-20160305-17740-1070w6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113927/original/image-20160305-17740-1070w6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113927/original/image-20160305-17740-1070w6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113927/original/image-20160305-17740-1070w6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The source location of some of the items in the PARADISEC collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PARADISEC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p></p>
<h2>The humanities telescope</h2>
<p>PARADISEC is essentially a multi-institutional collaborative humanities experiment. Think of it as the humanities equivalent of a radio-telescope for astronomy, but focusing on the cultures of the Earth rather than on the stars.</p>
<p>In many ways, we know more about the range and number of objects in space than we do about the thousands of languages and cultures around us.</p>
<p>But, while the telescopes are run by a few specialists and their output is comprehensible to only another few, as with much humanities research the work of exploring human cultural diversity is more understandable to all. </p>
<p>PARADISEC is part of the new face of the humanities but is constantly <a href="http://paradisec.org.au/sponsorship.htm">looking to find funds</a> to do this work. In a race against time, many more collections need to be identified and preserved while we can still play the tapes. This work gives the cultures of our region the respect they deserve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55568/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Thieberger receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is the Director of the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC).</span></em></p>There are hundreds of different languages spoken in the Pacific region that could be lost. So it’s important to safeguard what recordings we have in a digital archive available to all.Nick Thieberger, ARC Future Fellow in Language Documentation and a Chief Investigator in the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/462852015-09-08T15:16:01Z2015-09-08T15:16:01ZHow 3D objects and pictures of heritage can connect children worldwide<p>Details are still emerging of the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/25/islamic-state-images-destruction-palmyra-temple-baal-shamin-isis">scale of destruction</a> on the heritage site of Palmyra in Syria. Now <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1543050/3d-cameras-to-stop-is-wiping-the-slate-clean">work is beginning</a> by archaeologists at Oxford and Harvard, determined to create a digital record of the ancient sites that remain. They are planning to get thousands of 3D cameras into Syria and Iraq that can be used by people on the ground to take 3D images of the countries’ cultural heritage.</p>
<p>This work is part of a growing trend to create heritage archives that can be used to support young people learning about world cultures. Online photo banks of heritage artefacts are growing. In the UK, there are quite a few heritage–based visual resources that can be used in the classroom, such as <a href="http://www.teachinghistory100.org/">The British Museum’s project</a> “teaching history with 100 objects” and the Wessex Archaeology <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wessexarchaeology/collections/">collection</a>. </p>
<p>Recently, special attention has been placed on <a href="https://theconversation.com/please-touch-the-artefacts-3d-technology-is-changing-museums-28724">3D heritage visualisations</a>, especially in the emerging area of 3D printing for education. The start-up project <a href="http://www.museofabber.com/">Museofabber</a> aims to 3D-print museum collections and use them in the classrooms, inviting teachers to send in requests for objects to be printed. Other 3D printing initiatives include 3D miniatures made by the <a href="https://vcuarchaeology3d.wordpress.com/">Virtual Curation Laboratory</a> and <a href="http://uwf.edu/cassh/departments/anthropology-and-archaeology/spotlight/uwf-archaeologists-3d-scanning-and-printing/">3D printed bones</a> at the University of Western Florida. </p>
<p>Alongside 2D visual artefact collections and 3D printing, educational 3D games have also incorporated heritage artefacts, such as the Danish company <a href="http://www.seriousgames.net/">Serious Games Interactive</a>’s game for Danish school children featuring Viking heritage and artefacts in the city of Odense. </p>
<h2>Using heritage to forge connections</h2>
<p>Yet a question remains around the extent to which these educational projects can help connect children of different nations. In order to care for and understand heritage, we need to start with understanding and caring for people around the globe. The idea of using heritage in education to <a href="https://books.google.com.cy/books?id=XdCvAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">act as “connective tissues”</a> among children and people around the world is especially important for nations that do not belong to the same geographical or cultural realm (for example, East and West). It’s also very pertinent for regions and nations that have experienced a history of conflict, or where heritage may have been destroyed. </p>
<p>Such inter-cultural exchange can challenge particular discourses about heritage, such as those that <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/682302?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">foster</a> a single, nationalistic interpretation of history, national identity and artefacts or those that include negative images of other people and cultures as a whole. The scholar <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Identity_and_Violence.html?id=srCsbXDejd0C&hl=en">Amartya Sen argues</a> that a singular, pure identity of any kind is an illusion, connected to many conflicts and barbarities in the world. </p>
<p>I am not calling here for uniformity in the way that heritage artefacts are interpreted, but rather tolerance and reconciliation through human diversity, emphasising more what nations have in common rather than what differentiates them. In line with these ideas, <a href="http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/teacher-support/tools-and-guides/images-and-artefacts">Oxfam GB has called for initiatives</a> that use heritage artefacts in education to promote “positive images of people, places and artefacts”. </p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-the-list-of-world-heritage-in-danger-15679">article</a> on The Conversation showed a list of world heritage sites in danger. In order to protect and cherish this and any other world heritage, we, educationalists around the world, first need to support children’s understanding about heritage sites in a way that provides multiple interpretations of the significance of artefacts and care for other human beings. </p>
<h2>History and culture you can visualise and touch</h2>
<p>That is why it is critical to incorporate heritage artefacts in teaching around the world. Children need to learn that the past is always subject to different interpretations, depending on who interprets it. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94165/original/image-20150908-4342-bbqt94.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94165/original/image-20150908-4342-bbqt94.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94165/original/image-20150908-4342-bbqt94.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94165/original/image-20150908-4342-bbqt94.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94165/original/image-20150908-4342-bbqt94.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94165/original/image-20150908-4342-bbqt94.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94165/original/image-20150908-4342-bbqt94.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pitoti: prehistoric Italian rock art.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Cambridge</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A recent <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131881.2015.1058098#.VaKInkZWKiw">study</a> I undertook with colleagues at the University of Nottingham asked a selection of teachers in the Midlands region of England to consider the educational potential of Italian heritage artefacts using 2D and 3D visualisations. The artefacts were named “pitoti” by locals, meaning “little puppets” – a fascinating collection of rock art representing humans, animals, objects and abstract symbols <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/94">engraved in the rock</a> from prehistory to medieval times in Valcamonica in Italy’s Lombardy region. The British teachers we interviewed thought there was considerable potential in using pictures and 3D visualisations of international heritage across different subjects and activities in the curriculum. </p>
<p>Our research showed that education supported by pictures or 3D technology can help any heritage to cross national borders. Any artefact can be digitised and its history translated into many languages so that language does not act as a barrier for teachers and students in different countries. However, the real challenge is to reach and connect teachers and education systems that may have a limited access to technology or have different political and cultural views around heritage. But we need to start somewhere. </p>
<p>Only time can tell whether 3D technology will become globally accessible and affordable. However, photographs and illustrations can serve this purpose well if access to 3D technology or its cost is an issue. If educationalists around the world are supported to develop initiatives that embrace a more connected and pluralist way of using heritage artefacts in education, they can help connect children around the world. Such an education that fosters intercultural collaboration and dialogue around human artefacts is a small step towards world peace. Perhaps a distant dream, but hopefully an achievable future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46285/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasa Lackovic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Using technology to recreate heritage items can help connect nations.Natasa Lackovic, Lecturer in Education, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.